Box Office Update 7/20-7/22: Chuck and Larry Top Harry

Adam Sandler asserted his box office power once again. When you put him in the lead role of a comedy, a goofy comedy not a serio-comedy, and he will give you a good opening weekend which will likely lead to a run north of $100 million. I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry opened at the south end of his recent comic outings, but it was strong enough, at $34.2 million, to lead the weekend's box office, outrunning Harry Potter to the finish line. The movie proved not to be terribly memorable, but it is not likely to disappoint fans much. It fell shy of what I thought it would do, but it is no less a good opening for Sandler, and a good showing for Kevin James in his first top billing (next to Sandler).

There was one other film that made it to the top ten this week was Hairspray, the musical based on the broadway show, based on the 1988 John Waters film of the same name. I found it to be a hard one to predict, as musicals have not done terribly well lately, and it features John Travolta in drag (not to mention the fatsuit). I figured it would fail to crack $20 million, but it blew past that to settle at nearly $27.5 million. I saw it opening night, and found it to be a thoroughly enjoyable experience, it did not bring anything new to the table, but it was so infectiously upbeat and innocent that it was hard to not smile. Also, it seems as if High School Musical star Zac Efron turned out to be quite a draw amongst the tween set, based on the anecdotal evidence of the crowd sitting around me at the screening.

As for last week's top movie, Harry Potter and The Order of the Phoenix, it settled for number 2 roughly $2 million behind the leader. I had expected a stronger second week, considering it has been getting good word of mouth, but I guess I should have expected that, with all the Potter-heads staying home to plow through the recently released seventh, and final book. Still, it did pretty well, and I suspect it will level off a bit next weekend.

Among the remaining returning films, three did well, posting drops of less than 40%. First is Pixar's latest, Ratatouille, finishing in 5th and remaining one of the best films of the year in my estimation. Next is the fourth Die Hard, as in Live Free or, it came in 6th place, while it's tally was pushed past $116 million, and by this date has surely surpassed Die Hard 2 as the biggest money maker of the series. Finally, there is Judd Apatow's vulgar, sweet, and insightful comedy, Knocked Up, hanging onto number 10.

Finally, we have Transformers, which came in number 4. It is pushing ever closer to the $300 million mark. It is a total that it is likely to surpass, but will probably not make a push for the summer title, which seems firmly in the grasp of Spider-Man 3. It's too bad, as the Michael Bay blow'em up was a much more satisfying excursion into summer popcorn flick-land.

Next week brings a number of new films into competition. First among them is The Simpsons Movie, but will also have the Catherine Zeta Jones starrer No Reservations, along with I Know Who Killed Me, and Who's Your Caddy, all moving into varying levels of wide release.

Two movies dropped off the top ten this week: Sicko (11) and Ocean's Thirteen (12).

This Week	Last Week	Title	Wknd Gross	Overall	Week in release
1	N	I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry	$34,233,750	$34,233,750	1
2	1	Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix	$32,511,350	$207,866,865	2
3	N	Hairspray	$27,476,745	$27,476,745	1
4	2	Transformers	$20,514,497	$262,978,000	3
5	3	Ratatouille	$10,899,179	$165,519,955	4
6	4	Live Free or Die Hard	$7,101,638	$116,267,866	4
7	5	License to Wed	$3,577,230	$38,495,133	3
8		1408	$2,621,194	$67,453,524	5
9	7	Evan Almighty	$2,552,890	$93,567,015	5
10	8	Knocked Up	$2,292,640	$142,698,885	8

Box Office Predictions Recap
My placings weren;t too bad, and I was pretty close in some of my predictions. However, I was low on the top two by a pretty good margin. Though, I do have to admit to being surprised by the hold that License to Wed has had, it is not a good movie, but I guess Robin Williams is enough of a draw to bring the people in. Next week will probably see another shakeup at the top when The Simpsons Movie hits.
Anyway, here is how I picked the field:

Actual	Prediction	Title	Wknd Gross	Prediction
1	1	I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry	$34,233,750	$40 million
2	2	Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix	$32,511,350	$38 million
4	3	Transformers	$20,514,497	$19 million
3	4	Hairspray	$27,476,745	$17 million
5	5	Ratatouille	$10,899,179	$11 million
6	6	Live Free or Die Hard	$7,101,638	$7.5 million
8	7	1408	$2,621,194	$3.5 million
10	8	Knocked Up	$2,292,640	$3 million
11	9	Sicko	$1,945,723	$3 million
7	10	License to Wed	$3,577,230	$2.5 million