'Hancock' Meets Lowered Expectations

Hancock enjoyed the Fourth of July with an estimated 8% increase up to $18.5 million. That bring Hancock's total box office just shy of $60 million. Last year, Transformers brought in $22.7 million and the year before that, The Pirates of the Caribbean sequel opened with a then record-breaking $55.8 million. In that context, $18.5 million isn't much to celebrate, but it's still a strong weekend. While there were some very optimistic predictions early on, it seems that by the beginning of the week, just about everyone had lowered the bar to around $100-110 million, give or take $10 million.

Let's see how the Terminator 3 / Hancock comparison has held up so far:

Tuesday: $6.8 million
Wednesday: $17.3 million
Thursday: $17.1 million (Predicted: $16.4 million)
Friday: $18.5 million (Predicted: $18.1 million)

The real money will come on Saturday and if Hancock continues to slightly outperform the T3 model, expect somewhere around $25 million today and $19 million on Sunday. That big Saturday bounce is crucial. If bad weather on Friday pushed fireworks shows onto Saturday that could impact Saturday night business. Otherwise, Hancock would finish up the week with around $104 million.

[ Correction Sunday morning: I noticed that my projected $2 million for Kit on Saturday seemed way too high. This was because I did the math incorrectly. A 50% increase would be around $1.3 - 1.4M ]

Back in 8th place with around $0.9 million, Kit Kittredge couldn't make the transition from limited to wide release. The first clue that a wide release probably wouldn't work out was the rather precipitous 51% second week drop in limited. In addition, those early box office grosses were propped up by the local American Girl stores, expensive tickets and "free" T-shirt giveaways. If it's any consolation, Kit will likely see at least a 50% increase up to around $2 million on Saturday and a Sunday around $1.5 million for a weekend total near $4.4 million.

This all assumes that business will pick up rather dramatically on Saturday because moviegoing was tamped down on Friday due to fireworks and so on. If you notice that the movie theater isn't around 50% more busy today, well, feel free to discard the box office projections.

While two weeks away, I think everyone's attention is going to now focus on The Dark Knight. It is sometimes hard to distinguish general excitement from the fanboy internet echo chamber (i.e. Snakes on a Plane), but the early presale levels have been impressive. The diehard fans are already expecting Spider-Man 3's record to go down in flames, as any good diehard fan would, but I'm going to remain skeptical. I can say, however, that The Dark Knight looks like a much more deserving holder of the record.