Other Crap

As I predicted last week, Poseidon is a disaster picture in more ways than one. It could not wrest the #1 spot from M:i:III on Friday, despite the fact that the latter is not performing any better than expected, and is itself a disappointment.
It gets worse. The Lindsay Lohan movie performed poorly as well. It barely took in more per screen than American Haunting despite the fact that the latter is in its second week, and was a bomb to begin with!
The week's third new release, Goal, actually did less per screen than An American Haunting, and was on fewer screens to boot.
It appears that this will be the second straight week in which the new releases have consisted of two bombs and an underperforming pseudo-blockbuster. The cumulative effect of all those negatives is a Friday in which the top 12 were 14% below Friday, May 13, 2005, despite the fact that that day was also 14% below Friday, May 14, 2004!
This wasn't the time for a bad weekend. The weak lead-in to the summer places a tremendous amount of pressure on The DaVinci Code. Tom Hanks will almost single-handedly have to take on the numbers established last year by the the final Star Wars movie, which amassed more than $100 million on its opening weekend. Barring some unforeseen circumstances, look for some deficits relative to last year in the next few weeks, possibly even until Superman Returns on June 30th.

Saturday, May 13, 2006