Boltish Box Office

This from comments:

How do you figure that BOLT's worldwide B.O. is going north of 300 million when it currently stands at 220 mil. That means its going to make another 80 mil ...

I realize that you are trying to be optimistic but don't you think that's a little unrealistic[?] ...

Fine. I'm unrealistic. And here's a little more of my unrealism right here:

Disney animated movie Bolt has fetched a whopping £2.8m in its first weekend in UK cinemas.

The film, about a dog who stars in a TV show and thinks its powers are real, proved a big hit with film fans in its first three days.

The White Doggie, in case you don't know, landed at the top of the U.K. box office during its opening three days.

See, here's the way it works with me. I'm not dealing with aesthetics here, not arguing whether Bolt is better than Wall-E or Mr. Bug Goes to Town or Cinderella III. I'm looking at numbers and multipliers and releasing patterns.

Because what counts with studios is not that a majority of movie critics went into spasms of orgiastic delight when they viewed the movie, but how the movie performed at the AMC, Edwards Cinemas, and all the other movie houses around the globe. Did the turnstiles twirl? Or did they stand idle?

Say it with me now: It's all about the M-O-N-E-Y.

Period.

And as another commenter ... who's apparently headquartered in the reality-based community ... said:

... Japan, which Bolt has not yet been released in, could alone very likely rack up at least $60 million or more, since that is one of the biggest international markets for Disney animation ...

The trades have endlessly repeated how Bolt is being rolled out in foreign markets slowly and carefully, so maybe the Mouse learned something from its oafish domestic release. But whatever the reason, Bolt is doing fine in foreign lands.

So the White Doggie undershot my $120 million prediction for domestic gross (but not by much), and will outperform box office forecasts everywhere else.

How much will it ultimately make? More than $300 million.