Source:
Box Office Guru
Posted on: Mon, May 19, 2008 05:40:50
Written By: Michael Dance
MichaelDance@TheCinemaSource.com
As expected, The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian took the box office crown away from two-time champ Iron Man. However, the gross - an estimated $56.6 million - was lower than expectations and lower than the $67 million opening weekend that The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe scored in 2005. All holdovers, especially the Iron Man behemoth, continued to do well, except for the plummeting failure known as Speed Racer. The top ten estimates, in millions:
While the industry is buzzing today about what made Prince Caspian underperform, it comes down to two chief reasons. First is that as a book, Prince Caspian is nowhere near as popular as The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, something that the remaining Narnia films will also have to overcome. Second, more importantly, is that Disney has released a huge family film when nobody's out of school yet.
The Harry Potter franchise learned this when they released 2004's Prisoner of Azkaban in early June and saw the film gross the least in the series; last year, they held off on Order of the Phoenix until July - when every day is a Saturday for kids - and saw it gross more than any other film except the first. Caspian also should've been released in July.
Still, though the numbers are perhaps disappointing, they're nowhere near the catastrophic levels of Speed Racer. The summer's first flop, fueled by negative press all week, dropped 58% to $7.6 million and looks to barely reach a $40 million total. Contrast that with Iron Man, which dropped only 39% in its third weekend and is greedily eyeing the not-insurmountable $300 million mark.
Among female-skewing films, What Happens in Vegas is proving to be quite popular as it dropped only 31% from its
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