Other Crap

Weekend Box Office Results for November 3–5, 2006

• The phenomenal Borat pulled in $31,511 per screen. The two biggest opening weekends of all time are Pirates of the Caribbean with $32,800 per screen, and Spider-Man with $31,800. No other wide release has ever gone above $30,000 per screen.
• The other two wide releases finished #2 and #3. Flushed Away performed within the analyst's range of expectations, but Santa Clause was down a bit.
• The Departed continued to be strong, dropping only 19% from last week, and passing $100m. It is now within a hair's breadth of The Aviator's total, and will thus become Scorsese's biggest hit in a day or two.
• The Queen was a surprise top ten finisher, given that it was only on 350 screens. It bulled its way into tenth with nearly $8,000 per screen. That would have been the big story of most weeks, but this was Borat Week.
• Overall, the weekend was about even with last year. (Down 3%) It had been expected to be much worse by analysts, but Borat saved the day. The weekend was about $14m higher than the average of the experts' predictions, and Borat accounted for all of that, with an extra $16m above expectations.