From the time I heard about Evan Almighty, to its marketing trailers, this looked like a potential financial disaster for Universal, and it may be. With production costs between $175 to $200 million, this had to have a good start, and it didn't.
While it finished first, the most expensive comedy of all time was only to bring in $32.1 million, not reaching the projected numbers most thought it would draw of around $40 million.
The film may last over a period of time, but it won't reach what the studio had hoped for. It may not be the type to attract international audiences either. It'll struggle to reach the budget numbers, at least on the domestic side of it. For Universal at least it does give them their No. 1 opener for the summer.
The second place film was the horror offering by MGM "1408," which did pretty well taking in $20.2 million. That's impressive in that the horror business hasn't been drawing that well lately, and it's performing against some pretty big films.
What I like about this is it goes with the money-making strategy we talk at bizofshowbiz about a lot, in creating low budget, quality films. This is one of those in its genre. It has already almost reached its production budget of $25 million in its first weekend. They also advertised it good to get people to take a first look.
For horror films, this is the largest opening since Saw III in October 2006.
For third-place finisher "Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer," we have a continuation of the summer trend of starting big and then dropping off the cliff. It happened again as it dropped a huge 65 percent, and the entire weekend won't even reach its first days' numbers. It finished with a little over $20 million.
The top ten for the weekend:
| 1 | Evan Almighty | $32,112,000 |
| 2 | 1408 | $20,175,000 |
| 3 | Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer | $20,150,000 |
| 4 | Ocean's Thirteen | $11,345,000 |
| 5 | Knocked Up | $10,636,000 |
| 6 | Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End | $7,215,000 |
| 7 | Surf's Up | $6,700,000 |
| 8 | Shrek the Third | $5,754,000 |
| 9 | Nancy Drew | $4,505,000 |
| 10 | A Mighty Heart | $4,006,000 |
Other Box Office Sites:
Remember to Sign up for my feed, bizzbite and digg this!
Comment Preview