Brief Weekend Recap (August 7th-9th, 2009)

Here's the weekend chart, with actuals.

A few briefs comments:

-G.I. Joe: Rise of the Cobra had a strong opening with $54.7m, which was down considerably from the $56.2m estimate due to a larger Sunday drop than the one predicted by the studio. The film defied bad publicity at several stages of its development and pre-release. Its subequent run will depend on several factors over the coming days, but the film looks to have a fairly solid overall gross as well. Word of mouth is average, which suggests that it might not help up too well in the face of mounting competition in the weeks to come. Working away from an assumed $23-25m second weekend, I'd put the total at $145m at this point.

-Julie & Julia had a good opening with $20m. Films of this kind tend to have healthy runs, and the film has enough room to acquire audiences over the next month or two. I think it's too early to tell at this point whether it can get close to $100m, but $80-90m should be easily achievable.

-Terrible hold for Funny People. Look for the film to fizzle out even further as it starts shedding theatres. I see $57m at most, unless the film stabilizes at some point later on and adds a few more million.

-The 50% drop for Harry Potter is unfortunate, but the film is still headed toward $300m. Potter was evidently affected by G.I. Joe, but the steep thearte count drop is partly responsible as well.

-The Hangover held up well again, despite the fact that this is its second worst drop. A remarkable performance continues to be, well, remarkable. $270m is within easy reach, and I suspect the film might even get past $273m.

-Transformers looks safe to pass $400m, while Ice Age 3 will miss the $200m mark due to the theatre count drop. International figures more than make up for anything domestic shortcomings, however, as Ice Age 3 looks to possibly become one of the four biggest international films of all time. Up looks to finish with $289-290m.

The top 12 films this weekend grossed a total of $132m, up 16.3% from last weekend and 18.4% from the same weekend last year, when The Dark Knight continued at the top of the charts for a fourth weekend in a row. This is also the 16th biggest weekend of the year and the 12th biggest of this summer (that is, the 4th worst).

Charts coming up!

A Comparative Analysis of the Weekend Performances of the Major 2009 Releases

I know that the huge chart below is bewildering, so allow me to explain.

I have essentially offered up a comparative analysis of the first nine weekends (or less, where applicable) of all the 16 films that have grossed more than $100m this year and were released in January or after. Each film's weekend gross was compared to those of all other films and is given as a percentage.

So, for example, Up's first weekend gross corresponds to 62.5% of Transformers' opening weekend, its second weekend corresponds to 104.29% of Transformers' second weekend. What this means is that Up had so good a hold in its second weekend that it managed to surpass Transformers despite having an opening less than two-thirds that of Transformers'. The films grow wider apart during the third weekend: Up's third weekend is 127% of Transformers 2's (or, conversley, Transformers 2's was 78.71% of Up's).

The point is the essentially the same that I made yesterday, which is that we have had several films this year that have held up remarkably well weekend to weekend. Consider The Hangover, whose opening weekend was only 41.28% of Transformers 2. Its second weekend was 77.49%, and by the third weekend, it had shot past Transformers 2, by having a weekend gross 110.49% of T2's. By the sixth weekend, The Hangover had more than doubled T2's correpsonding weekend gross! As impressively, Paul Blart and Taken each opened with, resp., 29.21% and 22.68% of T2's gross. By the fifth weekend, both were ahead of T2, at 135.19% and 121.41%.

Such figures are, I think, very important to keep in mind when assessing the dynamics at play between various films. 2009 has been an extraordinary year, and we have to account for the relationship between the various films and their performances to gain a proper understanding of it.

Sorry for the size of the font; Blogger resized it for some reason. For a larger version, go here.