Kids Battle Mutants for Box Office Crown

May 9, 2003

This week only one movie opens wide, Daddy Day Care, but it does open in almost 3400 theatres. Will that be enough to unseat X-Men as box office champ? In a word, no.

X-Men 2 earned so much on its opening weekend that a 50% drop is almost assumed. Before X-Men 2, more than half the movies with previous top ten opening weekends suffered a 50% drop on their second weekend. Weekday tracking, original movie’s performance, fanboy effect all suggest this trend will continue. Still, even a 60% drop would be enough to win this weekend.

Eddie Murphy’s career has been hit and miss recently, misses like I Spy and Pluto Nash are offset by hits like Dr. Doolittle and The Nutty Professor. But where does Daddy Day Care fit in? Reviews, which are poor, suggest a box office similar to Showtime. But the target audience suggests closer to Dr. Doolittle. Split the difference for a $20 million box office.

The rest of the top five will be made up last weeks 2 through 4, in the same order. The Lizzie McGuire Movie will probably have the lowers drop off in the top five, and should finish comfortably in third place with $10 million. That would make its total box office more than its total budget in less than 2 weeks. We will be seeing a lot more of Hilary Duff after this.

Identity will drop to fourth place, with a little more than $6 million. Identity’s total box office could reach $40 million by this weekend on its way to a $55 million total box office. Not bad for a movie that cost about half that to make.

Anger Management is really shedding theatres, while Holes is still picking some up. So we could see Holes overtake it to stay in top five for one more week. Either way, the fifth place finished should grab an additional $5 million.

Two additional notes for this weekend: A Mighty Wind is expanding into 765 theatres and should end up in the top ten. Also, The In-Laws is having a preview in 800 theatres on Saturday; it opens wide on May 23rd.

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Filed under: X-Men 2, Anger Management, Daddy Day Care, Holes, Identity, The In-Laws, A Mighty Wind