Clive and Monica, get your vaseline and Kleenex ready for this one..

Weekend Estimates
1 3:10 to Yuma LGF $14,100,000
2 Halloween MGM $10,034,000
3 Superbad Sony $8,000,000
4 Balls of Fury Rog. $5,693,000
5 The Bourne Ultimatum Uni. $5,478,000
6 Shoot ‘Em Up NL $5,450,000
7 Rush Hour 3 NL $5,330,000
8 Mr. Bean’s Holiday Uni. $3,387,000
9 The Nanny Diaries MGM/W $3,321,000
10 Hairspray NL $1,950,000
11 Stardust Par. $1,803,000
12 Death Sentence Fox $1,600,000

Analysis
3:10 To Yuma opened relatively impressive for Lionsgate and for director James Mangold (Walk the Line) and actors Christian Bale and Russell Crowe.
Halloween finished the weekend in 2nd place experiencing a hefty 62% drop from the first weekend and relatively typical of the horror genre. With $44 million in box office thus far it looks like this film will easily surpass $50 million which is quite impressive for a film such as this.
Superbad finished the weekend in the 3rd spot surpassing $103.7 million in box office now surpassing the $20 million in box office that the film had grossed.
Clive Owen and Monica Belluci’s film Shoot ‘Em Up did rather poorly for New Line with only a tad more than $5.4 million in its debut weekend on 2,108 screens and only good enough for 6th place.

1 Superbad Sony $18,000,000 -45.5% $68.6M cume
2 The Bourne Ultimatum Uni. $12,361,000 -37.8% $185M cume
3 Rush Hour 3 NL $12,250,000 -42.6% $109M cume
4 Mr. Bean’s Holiday Uni. $10,121,000 5 WAR LGF $10,000,000
6 The Nanny Diaries MGM/W $7,811,000
7 The Simpsons Movie Fox $4,400,000 -35.6% $173M cume
8 Stardust Par. $3,954,000 -30.0% $26.5M cume
9 Hairspray NL $3,450,000 $107.5M cume
10 The Invasion WB $3,140,000 -47.2% $11.5M cume
11 Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix WB $2,480,000 -32.2% $283M cume
12 Underdog BV $2,243,000 -41.7% $36M cume
13 Becoming Jane Mira. $2,200,000 -25.0% $13M cume
14 I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry Uni. $2,102,000 -41.6% $114M cume
15 Resurrecting the Champ YFG $1,849,000
16 Illegal Tender Uni. $1,436,000

Weekend Wrap-Up
As the weekend pulled into a close it became clear that Superbad was super-good and that the good word of mouth and reviews had led the film to finish first at the box office for the second straight week defeating three new mediocre entries into the charts in the likes of WAR featuring the duel between Jet Li and Jason Statham which managed 5th place with $10 million for Lionsgate. Also opening was “the incomporable” Rowan Atkinson’s turn as Mr. Bean’s Holiday which opened at fourth with $10.1 million for Universal and MGM/Weinstein’s The Nanny Diaries which managed to collect the teen girl crowd with a sixth place opening and $7.8 million.

Perhaps the most impressive of the mediocre looking new entries was Mr. Bean’s Holiday as it managed to squeeze out the most per screen on only 1,714 screens showing that Universal’s targeted marketing was superior to the 2,277 screens that carried WAR or the 2,629 that featured The Nanny Diaries. More spending less is always good and Mr. Bean should have legs. After smoking a bowl or two of crack or hydroponic, he’s even funnier too.

Resurrecting the Champ’s measly $1.9 million and 15th place (on 1,605 screens) showed that the Yari outfit distributing the film are still not up to snuff even when their compelling films star Josh Hartnett and Samuel L. Jackson.

Friday Estimates
1. Rush Hour 3 (New Line) - $19.1M
2. The Bourne Ultimatum (Universal) - $10.415M
3. The Simpsons Movie (Fox) - $3.6M
4. Stardust (Paramount) - $3.05M
5. Underdog (Buena Vista) - $2.23M
6. Hairspray (New Line) - $2.175M
7. I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry (Universal) - $1.93M
8. Harry Potter & the Order of the Phoenix (Warner Bros) - $1.6M
9. No Reservations (Warner Bros.) - $1.325M
10. Daddy Day Camp (Sony) - $1.27M
10. Becoming Jane (Miramax) - $1.01M
*Skinwalkers (Lionsgate/After Dark) - $175,000

Rush Hour 3 - “Can you hear the words that are coming out of my mouth?” The Bret Ratner, Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker trio combined for hopefully the last time to earn an impressive $19.1 million yesterday. It looks like Rush Hour 2’s $67+ million plus opening in August 2001 was much too long ago for the momentum to stay. Add to that Chris Tucker’s $20 million price tag, Bret Ratner’s catering and craft service tab and New Line will be happy to see a small profit at the end of the day from their latest Rush Hour film. The good news is that with 3 films the DVD department can create a 3-pack for Wal-Mart and sell that sucker for years and years as a great Christmas gift. Rush Hour 2 grossed $226 million and the first Rush Hour grossed $148 million in 1998. ($33 million opening)

Bourne Ultimatum - After opening huge last Friday, it looks like this film will drop by more than half this weekend. Friday’s tally was 58% short of opening day. Overall, this franchise is a juggernaut however and in eight days has surpassed the $100 million mark. Bourne Identity in 2001 did roughly $121 million and Bourne Supremacy in 2004 did $176 million. Comparing the above two franchises, its clear to see that Bond-like action and momentum not lost by doing a movie every 3 years instead of after a 7 year interval is good business.

Stardust - This movie looks so weird (but has gotten mostly good reviews - currently at 72% on the Tomato-Meter). When I saw the posters for this film in Cannes I thought to myself: “This is a joke right?” - well apparently not. It’s a real movie and it opened poorly considering the $70 million budget. Should finish at about $8 or 9 million this weekend and will be lucky to get to $20 or $25 million all-told. I suspect that the great majority of film-goers on opening day went based on Robert De Niro’s participation. Although the superb cast (Peter O’Toole, Ian McKellan, Ricky Gervais and Michelle Pfeiffer) is interesting as is the work of director Matthew Vaughn (Layer Cake) - this is the type of film in my opinion that executives should get fired for.

Daddy Day Camp - Opening on Wednesday to take advantage of the last summer school holiday days, this sequel only managed a pathetic $773K on opening day and a meager $710K on Thursday. Adding a measly $1.27 million on Friday, the film will be lucky to reach Monday with more than $5 million. So next time you tell me Cuba Gooding Jr. is the same as Eddie Murphy, I will tell you to look at Daddy Day Care’s $104 million box office total from 2003 ($27 million opening.)

El Cantante - The J-Lo & Marc Anthony super-epic dropped 65% from its opening day total on 5 fewer screens (537) to reach a 7 day total of $4.6 million. Look for this film to reach an ultimate of $7 million or so.

I Know Who Killed Me - This Lindsay Lohan “masterpiece” dropped 71% from opening day to last Friday on 1,320 screens. The film’s box office and screen count for yesterday are not available yet, but the current box office total of $6.9 million is indicative that the film will probably end up at around $8 million or so.

Tags: box office estimates, rush hour 3, bourne ultimatum, eddie murphy, cuba gooding jr., robert deniro, stardust, daddy day camp, the simpsons, harry potter, hairspray

Weekend Estimates
1. The Simpsons $71.85M
2. I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry $19.06M
3. Harry Potter $17.07M
4. Hairspray $15.55M
5. No Reservations $11.8M
6. Transformers $11.5M
7. Ratatouille $7.2M
8. Live Free or Die Hard $5.6M
9. I Know Who Killed Me $3.4M
10. Who’s Your Caddy? $2.9M
11. Rescue Dawn $1.65M
12. License to Wed $1.3M
13. Sunshine $1.3M
14. 1408 $1.2M
15. Knocked Up $1.2M
16. Sicko $1.2M
17. Evan Almighty $1.1M

The Openers
The Simpsons performed huge this weekend exceeding all analysts’ expectations with a bonanza of $70M plus. As the film plays to families its likely to have good running legs and you can look for a low drop off next week as THE BOURNE SUPREMACY opens big next week but doesn’t take much of the core audience away from THE SIMPSONS revenue stream.

No Reservations did better than BOPsy expected it would do, but not as good as Steve Mason from Fantasy Moguls had predicted. Overall a good showing from the counter-programmed romance film with Catherine Zeta Jones and Aaron Eckhart.

I Know Who Killed Me didn’t do as well as most prediction services had anticipated despite a positive Friday night showing. Could be that either the lookey-loo’s came out on Friday and/or that negative word of mouth had spread to the Saturday night showing. Regardless, the estimate number is one we will re-check for you on Monday to verify its accuracy. The biggest concern for the distributor on this film will be the per screen average which although not great is better than 4 of the films above it in the Top 10 which could perhaps benefit the lower screen count for release week.

Who’s Your Caddy bounced back from a weak Friday night on Saturday and came out with a decent showing although what concerns me most about this film is the utter lack of an international market for a sports film with urban stars in it.

The Hold-Overs
Transformers - in 4 weeks this film has neared the $300M domestic mark with a current running total of $285M. This film is near $200M international and should end up with $520M+ worldwide. With a high production budget of $150 million, film-makers should see a final profit after all revenue streams of at least $100 million which on this film is extremely good due to the fact that none of the stars are gross point back-end earners. (Just imagine if they had cast Brad Pitt or Tom Cruise in one of the roles, 1/3 of the profits would be gone!)

Live Free or Die Hard - although not huge, the numbers that impress about this film are the drop of 25% in week 5 for this film that has now surpassed the $125 million mark domestically. International numbers here will dwarf domestic (current Int’l numbers are over $160 million) and therefore this $110 million budget film will be profitable for Fox and for Bruce Willis personally.

Sicko - The Michael Moore message documentary has now crossed $21.5 million in box office for distributor Lionsgate in 6 weeks of release. The documentary should surpass Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth’s $24M box office and become the third highest documentary film of all time (#1 is Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 with a box office of $119M and #2 is March of the Penguins with $77M.) Michael Moore’s dominance of the documentary category is impressive as he owns the #1 doc of all time, as well as Sicko which will be #3 as well as #5 Bowling for Columbine ($21.6M) and #12 Roger and Me ($6.7M)