Which Is More Crazy?

HSX's prediction that
Fantastic Four 2 will open at $60M

or

their prediction that
Evan Almighty will open at $45M?


btw, they predict Oceans 13 will open at $35.

Couple thoughts

First, I walked past a Transformers end cap at Target this morning and it hit me like a ton of bricks, "Transformers is going to be the biggest opening ever." Now, it opens on a Tuesday (July 4 is a Wednesday), so it's opening weekend will not beat Spidey 3's, but I bet it's 7-day total will be Pirates 3 ($160M), Spidey 3 ($182M), and perhaps even Pirates 2's ($192M). It's run time is estimated to be about two hours, shorter than any of those listed above, and if it comes in even shorter than 120mins, I say it's a lock. Think ID4 with 21st Century opening numbers.

That means it may make more in it's first seven days then I predicted it would in the course of the entire summer, but at least I didn't predict $110M. :-) In fairness, we both made our guesses before they released that final trailer, which is amazing!

As for current news, Knocked Up brought in $9.8M on it's opening day, putting it right on target to hit my predicted $28M opening weekend. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Finally, confirming what we already knew, Mr. Brooks made $3M yesterday, pretty much guaranteeing that it won't make the summer's top 20 list, so I think we're both 4 for 4 in predicting movies that would make it to the heights required to make the cut.

Tim Nailed Spidey, Eric Nailed Pirates

A month into the summer and only three of our top 20 movies have been released.

So how did we do?

Well, first, we correctly predicted that the only three movies to come out of March and make the top 20 had threes behind their names. So, apparently, had Lohan wanted to finally hit it big, Georgia Rules 3 would have been a better way to go.

Here's Poland's current estimates. The Pirates estimate is still pretty early since it's only played one weekend, but he's got a week of data to base it on, so it's not quite a wild guess. I'm thinking it could still go ±$25M either way...heck it's 6-day total is $23M behind Spidey 3's 6-day, so it's possible it may still land somewhere between Spidey and Shrek. Shrek is a couple weeks from it's delivery date so probably only ±$10M. Spidey ain't getting past $330M...but if it does, Tim's spot on.

Estimated final (current)
Pirates - $345 ($167)
Spidey - $325 ($310)
Shrek3 - $310 ($224)

That means together the three grosses $980M. Tim predicted that the three would gross $1.12B (off by 12.5%) and I guessed $1.03B (off by 5%).

Like I mentioned, Tim's $330 for Spidey was much better than my $360.
Tim's $400M for Pirates, however, was quite a bit of stretching and unless this movie proves to have surprisingly strong legs and not sea legs, it ain't even getting close. Eric's guess of $342 may rival Tim's Spidey guess for the best guess of the summer.
Tim totally missed Shrek. The movie that may not actually hit $300 million but to make Tim's prediction Shrek's gotta lead his fairy tale cadre to another $166M additional dollars..notta chance. My $330 looks to be a bit high too, especially if Surf's Up actually performs.

Oh well, there's a bit of a lull for the next couple weeks. Most interesting things will be watching to see how Knocked Up, Hostel 2, and Sicko do.

Eric's Summer 2007 Guesses

Here's my updated list. I stuck with my philosophy that it's all about openings. So, in light of the Yahoo post I adjusted some of the openings I had anticipated. All changes to my opening-based guesses are noted in parenthesis.

1. Harry Potter 5, $400
2. Spider-Man 3, $360 ($120, C)
3. Pirates 3, $342 ($120, D)
4. Shrek 3, $330
5. Simpsons Movie, $264 ($80, B)
6. Ratatouille, $260
7. Bourne Ultimatum, $200
8. Evan Almighty, $198
9. Transformers, $191 ($85M, F)
10. Chuck and Larry, $149
11. Live Free or Die Hard, $114 ($40, D)
12. Knocked Up, $112
13. Surf's Up, $111
14. Fantastic Four 2, $78
15. Ocean's Thirteen, $73
16. 1408, $66
17. 28 Weeks Later, $63
18. Invasion, $60
19. Hairspray, $56
20. Sicko, $50