Other Crap

Weekend Box Office Results, November 18-20

• Harry Potter opened at $101 million, the fourth best opening weekend of all time, and the best non-summer opening ever.
• Harry owns the cold weather months. Except for the other Harry Potter movies, the best non-summer opening weekend is far, far, behind. The Passion of the Christ took in $84 million in February, but excluding that unusual circumstance, the highest cold weather opening without the word "Potter" in the title is The Return of the King at $72 million. Considering only November weekends, the non-Potter record is a mere $70 million for The Incredibles.
• Although Potter had the #4 opening weekend in history, it was not the best of 2005! Revenge of the Sith opened at $108M. The second-best opening weekend of this year had previously been $65 million from War of the Worlds.
• Casey Kasem fact of the day. Which 2005 film had one of the forty best opening weekends of all time, but finished with a lower total gross than another film which opened the same weekend? That really happened! Charlie and the Chocolate Factory opened with$56 million on July 15-17, far ahead of Wedding Crashers. Months later, Wedding Crashers emerged as the long-term champion, $208-$205. Charlie did about what one would expect from its opening weekend, but Wedding Crashers ended up with a gross multiple of six times the opening weekend. (The norm is in the threes)
• Here is the list of all-time opening weekends.
• Harry's domination didn't have any effect on the major adult-themed movies. Pride and Prejudice held on to tenth place with an outstanding $9,000 per screen. Walk the Line opened bigger than expected. Derailed exceeded expectations.
• Harry did cut into the other kiddie flicks. Zathura, for example, dropped 63%, which is unusual for a film with good reviews and solid word-of-mouth. It just had the bad luck to come out against the wrong competitor. Chicken Little also fell below expectations.
• Thanks to the boy wizard, the weekend finished 19.5% higher than the comparable 2004 weekend.