TServo2049

Actually, the gap between their final grosses is $6m larger than the gap between their OWs. Wedding Crashers leapfrogging Charlie is a great example. From a $22m gap in favor of Charlie to a $6m gap in favor of Wedding Crashers. Though Blind Side closing from a $109m gap with New Moon down to a $40m gap is still the most astounding catchup ever. The biggest catchup in terms of ticket sales was My Best Friend's Wedding vs. Batman and Robin; the lead MBFW had over B&R at the end of their runs was about equal to the lead B&R had over MBFW after their first weekend, a complete flip. But even though it was probably a surprise that a Julia Roberts romcom completely overtook Batman, it was still a Julia Roberts romcom at the height of her popularity. It wasn't a weepy inspirational drama starring Sandra Bullock (didn't her career seem to be on the skids only a few years prior?) legging to $255m and ending up only $40m short of New Moon. Which was itself a shocking opening (and an equally spectacular flame-out - I wasn't following the box office back then, but even I heard murmurs about it somewhere, back in a time when 6 of the top 10 openers got better than a 3x multiplier off their first weekend.)

Have there been any other instances besides New Moon/Blind Side of two films opening wide on the same weekend, and the lower opener being so leggy/the higher opener so frontloaded that the gap between the two closed considerably by the end of their runs? (And I mean big hit films.) This is happening in Japan with Yokai Watch / Big Hero 6, but has it happened any other times domestically?

Just checking, is that a joke? I remember that Snakes was expected to do better than it did, after it became an Internet meme. The assumption was that the online viral popularity would translate into BO success. Was Snakes the first film to demonstrate the "this is gonna be an instant cult classic" fallacy? (see also: Kick-Ass, Scott Pilgrim, Machete)

This 3-day weekend will be bigger than any 3-day weekend in 2014 save for the post-Christmas weekend. This 4-day weekend will also be bigger than any long weekend in 2014. Yes, it's due to AS overperforming, but still - helps illustrate how anemic last year was.

I enjoy 1941. I recognize it's a bloated, overindulgent, over-the-top mess of a film, but damn it, I have always gotten enjoyment from watching it, and not in the sense of "perverse enjoyment from watching a cinematic trainwreck unfold".

I don't know if King Kong is overrated, at least not now. Maybe it was back in 2005, but it feels like its current reputation isn't anywhere near as sterling. I feel like quite a few people do see it for what it basically is: Peter Jackson given $200 million to play in the sandbox and make a really really expensive fan film.

King Kong is a self-indulgent mess, and I admit to being rather underwhelmed by it the first (and to date, only) time I saw it. I really should watch it again sometime, but I've never had any urge to...

Exchange rate changes?

Turtles '90 was nuts. #5 of the year, $260m adjusted, made most of its money in April/early May when that was a dead zone. New Line's highest-grossing movie for 8.5 years (until Rush Hour) and highest-attended for 9 years (until The Spy Who Shagged Me). And it did over 2.5x the gross/attendance of their previous highest grosser (Elm Street 4).

Toy Story 2 had a $91m adjusted Thanksgiving Fri-Sun after going wide. That's more than Lion King adjusted, does it count?

True. Many of those films would be PG-13 now. (Sixteen Candles would probably get an R due to the scene in the girls' showers - though it probably could have gotten a PG-13 back when the rating was introduced.)

Correction: Shamley Productions was not set up just to make Psycho. Shamley was the production entity Hitchcock set up to make Alfred Hitchcock Presents. But everything else is correct. Love Story was huge, it was like a "grown-up" Nicholas Sparks movie. And it had a hit single (not a song heard in the movie per se, but rather an instrumental piece from the film that was then set to lyrics and sung by Andy Williams).

True, but at the same time, late-90s release windows were usually 6-9 months, not 3 months. And if a film was very successful and leggy, a studio might still hold back the VHS release so as to not cut off the theatrical revenue (Jurassic Park didn't release to video until October 1994, and both Titanic and The Phantom Menace took close to a year). You were following things and I was only a kid, so I won't pretend I know more than you, but release windows WERE longer from all I can recall.

From what I understand, the Connery appearance was a big thing. They basically pulled a Samuel L. Jackson in Iron Man / and made absolutely no mention anywhere of the fact that he was going to show up in the film. Remember, Mel Brooks even lampooned it in Men in Tights by having Patrick Stewart show up as King Richard at the end (also without any advance publicity that he was going to be in it?)

I thought Cameron is a partner in space ventures too?

This is DreamWorks/Touchstone, not Disney. It could still conceivably be R (but knowing Hollywood, they'll probably still go PG-13 to cast that wide net). Also, I'm remembering that The Fifth Element somehow got away with showing naked Milla Jovovich's sideboob with nipple and still got a PG-13. Even back in 1997, that was still unusual. Also, due to safety reasons, there is no way they would film Scarlett, or her stunt double, actually fighting nude with no protection whatsoever. They'd probably have to be in some skintight outfit, with the nudity CGI'ed in later... I know nothing about GITS, so correct me if I messed anything up.

I think Rentrak may have lost THEIR source.

I don't hate the Abrams Trek films, but I don't think they're all that great either. And no, I didn't like Cumberbatch as Khan. And that Alice Eve picture reminds me of how much she was wasted in the film. I think that she could have played a very good young Carol Marcus - in a better movie, with a better script where her character was actually written to be the same person from Wrath of Khan.

This is actually pretty interesting. It helps show how big some past films were OS. For example, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone being immensely popular, and almost on par with Deathly Hallows Part 2. I also find Fellowship of the Ring vs. Two Towers intriguing. It seems that admissions for Two Towers dropped from Fellowship in quite a few OS markets, the complete reverse of what happened in domestically. Why did that happen, I wonder?

1990 was a crazy year. The entire top 5 were all overperformers that seemed to come out of left field. Home Alone adjusts to $550m, Ghost to $418m, Dances with Wolves to $355m, Pretty Woman was already mentioned, and Ninja Turtles was $260m. Meanwhile, films that were primed to be big hits (Dick Tracy, Back to the Future Part III, The Godfather Part III, Another 48 Hrs.) underperformed to varying degrees. TMNT blows my mind too. For something that seemed on its face to be a cash-in kids film based on a cartoon and toy line, TMNT was nuts. It did most of its business in April and early May (back when Memorial Day still kicked off the summer movie season). And it sold more tickets than the new movie. Not to mention that it remained New Line's highest-grossing film until Rush Hour in 1998, and their highest-attended film until Austin Powers 2 in 1999.

Yeah, what happened to BOM? They only seem to get weekend/cume data from a few countries nowadays. Thanks for this.

OK. Just checking since you lumped the Ang Lee one in with the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Ang Lee's Hulk? You sure you don't really mean The Incredible Hulk, the Edward Norton one? That was directed by Louis Letterier.

Of course I'd choose the Star Wars prequels, but here are some other choices: Star Trek V: The Final Frontier - it almost killed the Trek movie franchise. There are bits and pieces of a potential good film in there, but lost under so much garbage. The only worry I have is whether we would have gotten the Star Trek VI we did if not for Star Trek V (though we almost didn't get that either, the studio was looking for any excuse to kill the film due to the failure of V still fresh in their memory, and a major executive change-up at Paramount was the only thing that saved it). Star Trek Generations - I don't consider it a BAD movie, but I do consider it to be mediocre and a total wasted opportunity. The epic meeting of Kirk and Picard, and they do so little with it. In particular, the angle of Picard's brother and his family having died offscreen seems like a perfect setup for a parallel with Kirk having lost his son, yet that is never brought up at any point. The death of Kirk was also monumentally mishandled - killed by a freakin' bridge (and originally, shot in the back by Malcolm McDowell). Kirk should have gone out in a blaze of glory, in the captain's chair. Even more than V, there is a great movie struggling to get out.

Yeah, it's got to be school. That would easily explain why Yokai Watch dropped even harder - its audience is almost entirely made up of kids. Here in the USA, BH6 dropped on Tuesday; evidently, some schools went back into session on Tuesday instead of Monday. Even though BH6 is attracting a wider audience than Yokai Watch, it's still attracting a lot of children (and isn't it also big with high school/college-age girls/women who would also be going back to class this week?)