Crowd Report: Shepherd, Night at Museum...

At The Bridge: cinema de lux in LA, The Good Shepherd had a pretty strong turnout for the 7:00 show on Friday night with about 65% capacity in a 290 seat auditorium. That is pretty good for this theater; I think $2,000/screen Fri is possible but the average could be in the high-$1,000 range for a little over $4.0 million. It looks like the film could near $12 million for 3-days.

Night at the Museum was crowded at 8:00 but not sold out. It?s also in IMAX on another screen, which could be taking some of the traffic away ? but as I took a peek at the movie, it?s also more low-key than the ads make it out to be. I?m not sure this can reach $3,000/screen on Fri even with 3,688 theaters, and my guess is it comes in around $10 million, with potentially $26 million for 3-days.

Rocky was also dead at 7:00 in the biggest theater with about the same attendance as Flags as Our Fathers on opening night at 10. The Fri average could be right around $1,800 with so many theaters, but this still seemed like a prime time. $3.5 - 4.0 million could be the low end for Friday.

We Are Marshall was booked downstairs in the smaller auditoriums, and it had some terribly mediocre bookings elsewhere as well. The over/under mark for Fri is probably $1,000/screen, which could give it $7/8 million for 3-days.

Update (Sat 6 am pacific): Early estimates have Night at the Museum at $9.9 million for Friday, Rocky $4.2 (indicating a frontloaded release), The Good Shepherd $3.1 (on par with The Rainmaker), and We Are Marshall $2.5.

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