Giant Panda, Potent Zohan
Diversity pays.
A box office flush with movies about a martial-arts-fighting Ailuropoda melanoleuca and a hairdressing ex-Mossad agent was flush with cash, as the animated Kung Fu Panda and Adam Sandler’s You Don’t Mess With the Zohan combined to take in $100 million in their opening weekends.
Kung Fu Panda finished on top, with $60 million, per studio estimates today from Exhibitor Relations Co. You Don’t Mess With the Zohan took second, with $40 million.
Elsewhere, last weekend’s phenom Sex and the City broke a heel, with ticket sales falling 63 percent, but still managed to bring in another $21.3 million.
If the estimates hold, Kung Fu Panda should nudge Cars for eighth place on the list of all-time animation openers, per the stats at Box Office Mojo.
If the movie counts as a Jack Black movieBlack provided the panda vocalsthen it goes down as the comic’s No. 1 opener of all-time, and as a marked improvement over last winter’s Be Kind, Rewind.
Zohan definitely counts as a Sandler movie. As such, it’s debut stands as the star’s fifth biggest, just below Click and just ahead of 50 First Dates.
Since 1998’s The Waterboy, every classic Sandler comedy, meaning not Spanglish, has debuted in the mid-$30 millions to mid-$40 millions. Finding its sweet spot, Zohan represented an upgrade over I Know Pronounce You Chuck and Larry, which opened on the low end of the Sandler scale last summer.
Drilling down in the box-office standings:
- Diversity extended to the grosses, as the $60 million-grossing Kung Fu Panda and the $775,000-”grossing” Made of Honor could both rightly call themselves Top 10 films.
- Speed Racer didn’t fall out of the Top 10. It plummeted, earning just $370,000 in its fifth weekend, per Box Office Mojo. Overall, the reportedly $120 million summer bomb has grossed $42 million.
- Not to make Mr. Racer feel
badworse, but Tina Fey’s Baby Mama (ninth place, $779,090), which reportedly cost $30 million to make, has grossed $57.9 million overall. - Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (third place, $22.8 million; $253 million overall) is now within about $35 million of passing the finally tiring Iron Man (sixth place, $7.5 million; $288.9 million overall) as the year’s top-grossing movie.
- Second weekend fall off or no, Sex and the City is about a day, if not hours away, from cracking $100 million overall.
- Forgetting Sarah Marshall ($475,150) ends its Top 10 run after seven weekends, and a solid $61.5 million take.
- The new Heather Graham comedy Miss Conception averaged $500 on each of its three screens, per Box Office Mojo, and presumably began its journey to a Blockbuster shelf near you.
- John C. Reilly and Seann William Scott added up to $28,859 at six theaters for the new comedy The Promotion.
- The Genghis Khan epic Mongol put up the best, theater-for-theater numbers of the weekend, grossing $133,136 from five screens.
Here’s a recap of the top-grossing weekend films based on Friday-Sunday estimates compiled by Exhibitor Relations:
- Kung Fu Panda, $60 million
- You Don’t Mess With the Zohan, $40 million
- Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, $22.8 million
- Sex and the City, $21.3 million
- The Strangers, $9.3 million
- Iron Man, $7.5 million
- The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, $5.5 million
- What Happens in Vegas, $3.4 million
- Baby Mama, $779,090
- Made of Honor, $775,000
Sex Sells
In the end, yes, Sex and the City’s largely female fan base was a bad box office thing. For Indiana Jones.
The big-screen outing for Carrie Bradshaw and company knocked the latest Indy adventure from atop the weekend box office standings, with an unprecedented $55.7 million three-day gross, per studio estimates today from Exhibitor Relations Co.
The debut makes Sex and the City the top-opening romantic comedy of all time, bypassing the likes of Hitch ($43.1 million), The Break-Up ($39.2 million) and Knocked Up ($30.7 million).
It also ranks as the second biggest debut for a TV adaptation behind Mission: Impossible II, which opened with $57.8 million in 2000, per Box Office Mojo.
Sex’s opening beat the most optimistic projections, which foresaw a Friday-Sunday gross in the $40 million range.
And it trumped conventional wisdom that said the film’s woman-led cast of Sarah Jessica Parker, Kim Cattrall, Kristin Davis and Cynthia Nixon and female-skewing storylines, all continuations from the 1998-2004 series, would limit its ability to sell tickets.
With the initial questions answered, only one lingered: Once the initial rush was over, would Sex be a short-lived phenomenon?
Sex opened bigvery bigon Friday, amid reports of group parties and thousands of sold-out screenings. Its nearly $27 million take was more than Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull brought in on its first day, which was albeit a Thursday.
But where most movies, even a fellow R-rated comedy like Knocked Up, get bigger on Saturday, Sex got smaller, slipping to $17.7 million. Sunday was expected to bring in $11.1 million.
Add it all up, though, and Sex will end the weekend nearly covering its $65 million budget. And that’s not counting overseas grosses, which were not yet reported.
- Second-place Indiana Jones suffered the usual, second-weekend 50 percent plunge. Actually, in Indy’s case, it was a 54 percent drop, which doesn’t look so bad when you still come up with another $46 million and bring your overall total to $216.9 million.
- In a lesser weekend, The Strangers (third place, $20.7 million) might have finished No. 1. As it was, the Liv Tyler horror-thriller posted the year’s second-best debut for a horror-thriller after Prom Night, which did finish first in a lesser weekend.
- Iron Man (fourth place, $14 million; $276.6 million) has now outgrossed every superhero movie ever made outside of the Spider-Man franchise.
- With half the Top 10 bringing in more than $10 million each, overall business was up when compared to the same weekend last year.
- Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay ($475,000) fell out of the Top 10 after five weekends. With $37 million in the bank, the movie grossed more than double the original Harold & Kumar adventure.
- Savage Grace ($25,000 on two screens), the opulent true-life thriller starring Julianne Moore, made more money per theater than Indiana Jones.
- The martial-arts comedy The Foot Fist Way also enjoyed a strong debut, grossing $36,012 at four theaters.
Here’s a recap of the top-grossing weekend films based on Friday-Sunday estimates compiled by Exhibitor Relations:
- Sex and the City, $55.7 million
- Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, $46 million
- The Strangers, $20.7 million
- Iron Man, $14 million
- The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, $13 million
- What Happens in Vegas, $6.9 million
- Baby Mama, $2.2 million
- Speed Racer, $2.1 million
- Made of Honor, $2 million
- Forgetting Sarah Marshall, $1 million
The Indy 151
Bull’s-eye.
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull lived up to huge expectations, delivering $151.1 million in its first five days, per studio estimates today from Exhibitor Relations Co.
The movie accounted for nearly 60 percent of all ticket sales over the Memorial Day holiday weekend, grossing $101 million from Friday to Sunday, and $126.1 million from Friday to Monday.
After debuting with $25 million on Thursday, the movie, as expected, picked up speed over the weekend. Its biggest day was Saturday, when it grossed $37 million.
While the movie didn’t set any showy records and didn’t make it to the most outsized of projections that pegged a $175 million debut, it did make more money in its first 120 hours than all but four movies in Hollywood history.
In the annals of biggest three-day opening weekends, it ranks 10th, just ahead of this summer’s Iron Man, per Box Office Mojo. In the annals of four-day Memorial Day weekend debuts, it ranks second.
Worldwide, it simply scooped up a whole lot of money$313 million all together, combining domestic and foreign receipts, per Exhibitor Relations.
The $185 million Steven Spielberg-George Lucas movie, starring Harrison Ford, is the first new Indiana Jones since 1989’s Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
Kingdom of the Crystal Skull should shortly overtake both Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom ($179.9 million) and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade ($197.2 million).
At the end of the adventuring day, however, the original Indiana Jones, Raiders of the Lost Ark, should continue to stand as the giant of the series.
While Kingdom of the Crystal Skull will probably top that 1981 movie’s $245 million take, it probably won’t come close to topping its adjusted-for-inflation take.
In 2008 dollars, according to Box Office Mojo, Raiders grossed a titanic $606.4 million. (Temple of Doom’s take adjusts up to $368.3 million; Last Crusade’s to $340 million.)
If Indy doesn’t end up being as big as he used to be, then he’ll have to live with the next best thing: being big enough.
Other tidbits:
- Among its lesser records, Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is now the No. 1 movie of the year to star a senior citizen (age 65 or older), topping The Bucket List, a 2007 release which made most of its $93.3 million after Jan. 1.
- This weekend’s box office was actually down from last year’s. For one thing, Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was a bit smaller than Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End ($114.7 million, Friday-Sunday). Secondly, second-place finisher The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian ($23 million) was far smaller than its 2007 counterpart, Shrek the Third ($53 million).
- And for a third thing, two Top 10 movies failed to clear $1 million from Friday to Sunday.
- With $96.7 million in the bank as of today, Prince Caspian will easily break $100 million, but it won’t easily, if ever, top The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe’s $291.7 million.
- Caspian business was down 58 percent from its disappointing opening weekend.
- Far from winded after four weekends, Iron Man (third place, $20.1 million, Friday-Sunday; $25.7 million, Friday-Monday; $257.8 million overall) is living up to its title.
- The comedies Baby Mama (seventh place, $3.3 million, Friday-Sunday; $4.2 million, Friday-Monday; $53 million overall) and Forgetting Sarah Marshall (eighth place, $1.7 million, Friday-Sunday; $2.2 million, Friday-Monday; $58.7 million overall) have put together nice little runs.
- What Happens in Vegas (fourth place, $9 million, Friday-Sunday; $11.2 million, Friday-Monday; $56.4 million overall) has, too, but it has too much star power to truly qualify as nice ’n’ little.
- The Forbidden Kingdom ($375,000, Friday-Sunday; $489,000, Friday-Monday; $51.2 million overall) fell out of the Top 10, but comes up as Jackie Chan’s biggest hit outside of the Rush Hour and Shanghai Noon franchises. For Jet Li, the movie will probably fall just short of topping Hero and Romeo Must Die as his biggest hit outside of Lethal Weapon IV.
- In limited release, the John Cusack satire War, Inc. came up big with $35,336 from Friday to Sunday ($50,714, Friday-Monday) at two theaters.
Here’s a recap of the top-grossing weekend films based on Friday-Sunday estimates compiled by Exhibitor Relations:
- Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, $101 million
- The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, $23 million
- Iron Man, $20.1 million
- What Happens in Vegas, $9 million
- Speed Racer, $4 million
- Made of Honor, $3.4 million
- Baby Mama, $3.3 million
- Forgetting Sarah Marshall, $1.7 million
- Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay, $940,000
- The Visitor, $723,000
Indy Opens, But How Will It Close?
If it’s treasure Indiana Jones wants, he’ll have to wait for the weekend to collect the lion’s share of it.
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull opened Thursday with an estimated $25 million, per Exhibitor Relations Co.
The number puts the movie, the fourth in the adventure franchise, at fourth on the list for biggest Thursday debuts, per the stats at Box Office Mojo.
But it puts it at no better than 28th for all-time opening days (regardless of the day of the week), and falls short of expectations that, at their most expectant, pegged a $50 million start.
By comparison, Iron Man last month collected $35.2 million on its opening day (a Friday), good for 13th all-time.
Still, box office experts were not ready to count out, or against, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg’s savvy archaeologist.
“I’ll think we’ll know more from Friday,” Exhibitor Relations Jeff Bock said today. “This’ll play more like a family film.”
Family films tend to do their biggest business on the weekend.
The PG-13-rated Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is viewed as the summer family film to beat, especially with Speed Racer crashing and The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian losing at its own expectations game.
“It should do better on the weekend,” Box Office Mojo’s Brandon Gray said today.
The one potential booby trap awaiting Dr. Jones: Young moviegoers.
Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, starring the 65-year-old Harrison Ford, is the first Indiana Jones movie in a generation, since 1989’s Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
Because it also debuted after a lengthy gap between new movies, Lucas’ own Star Wars: Episode IThe Phantom Menace might be the best guidepost for Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. That franchise restarter opened with $28.5 million en route to a $431.1 million domestic gross, per Box Office Mojo.
The booby trap in that argument: The Phantom Menace opened nearly 10 years ago, when the average ticket was nearly $2 cheaper than it is today. Its $28.5 million represented a lot more tickets sold than the new Indiana Jones’ $25 million.
Still, Bock, who was calling for a five-day, Memorial Day weekend gross of as much as $175 million for Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, was not ready to call off the projection.
Gray essentially agreed. “Chances are now it’ll end up below expectations,” he said, “but the verdict is still out.”
Not that Indiana Jones has ever had to deal with tough odds before…