Box Office Update 6/9-6/11: Cars Races to the Top

The latest Pixar film rolled to the top spot with a total nearly 3 times as much as the runner up. Even with its $60 million plus haul, it fell short of expectations which were looking for the neighborhood of $70 million. Cars is the first Pixar release not to outdo its predecessor, The Incredibles which took in nearly $70.5 million. I saw the film, and while it was good, I think it was a bit too long and not nearly as entertaining as Pixar's previous films. Although, I must say that the animation may be some of the best to ever hit the big screen, it was simply gorgeous.

Also entering it's first weekend is the remake of The Omen. It opened this past Tuesday with a reported take of $12,633,666. I'm no genius, but something tells me that those final three numbers may have been fudged just a little bit. The weekend saw it add a little over $16 million more raising it to 4th place. The film was surprisingly good, it was an effective horror film, at least moreso than some of the other so-called horrors released of late.

There is one other new release to break into the upper echelons of box office success, at least for this weekend. Robert Altman's A Prairie Home Companion took in $4.5 million, strong enough for 7th place. I have heard good things from those who have seen it, but I am not one of them, yet.

Of the returning films, Mission Impossible III fared the best at audience retention from last week, dropping only 35.5%. It looks to be on its way to a final tally somewhere north of $140 million. Conversely, X-Men: The Last Stand dropped 52.7% from last week for the worst retention two weeks running. It has taken in over $200 million, so it is far from a bomb, but the tally keeps dropping precipitously from week to week.

Three films dropped from the list this week: An Inconvenient Truth (11), See No Evil (12), and Just My Luck (16). Next week will probably see 4 drop off as we have the release of 4 potential hits entering the cineplexes.

This Week	Last Week	My Guess	Title	Wknd Gross	Overall	Week in release
1	N	2	Cars	$60,119,509	$60,119,509	1
2	1	1	The Break-Up	$20,325,790	$73,926,040	2
3	2	4	X-Men: The Last Stand	$16,078,578	$202,244,652	3
4	N	3	The Omen	$16,026,496	$36,301,837	1
5	4	5	The DaVinci Code	$10,443,347	$189,171,331	4
6	3	6	Over the Hedge	$10,221,499	$130,213,521	4
7	N	7	A Prairie Home Companion	$4,566,293	$4,566,293	1
8	5	9	Mission: Impossible III	$3,020,816	$127,491,115	6
9	7	-	RV	$1,910,564	$64,921,678	7
10	6	8	Poseidon	$1,833,493	$54,928,443	5

Box Office Predictions Recap
Since I added box office gross predictions to my weekly new release column, I fugured we have enough information to give it its own table. Sure, some of the information duplicated, but it does a good job of showing how poor my amateur projecting is, doesn't it? I'm sure the more I do this, the better I will get at it.

The only dollar amount that I was even close to was The DaVinci Code, where I was a mere $.5 million off, everything else was either way over or under. As for actual positioning I did a little better, at least for the first half of the chart. The first 4 fell nicely into place, while the next three I was off by 1. Then I got thrown for a loop as the next two slots were filled by films I thought would be leaving this week, M:I:III and RV.

Actual	Prediction	Title	Wknd Gross	Prediction
1	1	Cars	$60,119,509	$65 million
2	2	The Break-Up	$20,325,790	$26 million
3	3	X-Men: The Last Stand	$16,078,578	$24 million
4	4	The Omen	$16,026,496	$19 million
5	6	The DaVinci Code	$10,443,347	$11 million
6	5	Over the Hedge	$10,221,499	$15 million
7	8	A Prairie Home Companion	$4,566,293	$1.5 million
8	-	Mission: Impossible III	$3,020,816	-
9	-	RV	$1,910,564	-
10	7	Poseidon	$1,833,493	$2.5 million

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