Friday Analysis: 'Sex' Shocker

Sex and the City handily beat all expectation with its amazing Friday performance of an estimated $26.9 million. Given that some predictions were for $30 for the ENTIRE weekend, Sex and the City will rank as one of the biggest surprise box office open in recent memory. Some of you might be thinking, so what? Indiana Jones did $30 million last week and you were complaining about it disappointing. Well, it's all about expectations. They might seem to have nothing in common, but I'm going to group Sex and the City with The Passion. They both had neglected core audience that the box office pundits ignored even as the buzz became overwhelming. In hindsight, it's hard to think anyone believed Sex would only open with $30 million, yet I thought Lee was crazy with his $58 million prediction (and yet that might be too low). On Thursday, Fandango reported that Sex and the City accounted for 92% of all ticket sales. That was a higher percentage than any summer movie including Iron Man and Indiana Jones. Why the huge surprise? It may have to do with the demographics of the typical box office pundit and the core audiences of other big surprises like The Passion and Madea's Family Reunion, but that's for another article.

It's hard for me to say where Sex and the City will finish the weekend. Some, including Lee, believe despite the huge Friday, Sex will see a Saturday increase. I think that's nearly impossible. This seems the definition of a frontloaded movie. Maybe if the sellouts were so widespread, that might force business over to Saturday and Sunday, but I'd be surprised to see Saturday increase at all. The Devil Wears Prada, which opened the weekend before July 4, ticked down around 1% on Saturday, but had a great Sunday hold of down -5% (likely because July 4th was on Tuesday and many had Monday off). In terms of massive frontloading, the only "chick flick" I can think of is Coyote Ugly. It dropped an astounding 24% on Saturday. It's not a good comparison, but it just jumped out at me. Down 24% for a non-sequel , non-horror movie back in 2000 is remarkable. I really can't say what the weekend total will be other than it will be much, much higher than everyone predicted.

In second place, Indiana Jones came in with a healthy $12.2 million. And here most people thought Indiana would rule the box office again, yet he has less than half of the number one spot. The drop from a week ago is 60%, but that is much better than last year's Pirates 3 drop of 70%. At World's End increased 39% on Saturday and I would expect Indiana Jones to at least match that for a Saturday of around $17 million, but possibly even more. On Sunday last year, Pirates dropped 24%, that type of drop would leave Indy with around $13 million for a weekend total of $42.2 million. I kept it simple and mirrored the daily performance of Pirates second weekend. Indy has been seems to be outperforming Pirates a bit on a percentage basis, so I'd say $42 million with an upward bias.

To cap off a surprisingly strong weekend, The Strangers did $7.8 million. I thought they did a great job advertising, but that the movie would be lost between Sex and the City, Indiana Jones and Iron Man. Nope, it was able to open with around what I feared it might do for the whole weekend. Strangers could be frontloaded, drop off 10% or so on Saturday and up to 30% on Sunday for a weekend total around $20 million. I don't have a many great comparisons for late May horror movies, but that total is probably on the pessimistic side.

Overall, the box office was incredibly strong - up 57% from last year and 48% from 2006. There's always a whisper about how movie attendance is down year after year, but it's weekend like this that show if the right movies come out, people will see them. A 57% increase isn't inflation, that's more people.