Saturday, August 25, 2007

Late August B.O.

Superbad continues its winning ways with a second Numero Uno finish. $5.7 million in the till on Friday.

The Bourne Ultimatum is in the second spot, hauling in $3,600,000 for a total of $176.4 million. As for animated product...

The Simpsons Movie occupies Position #5 and has now crossed the $170 million threshhold.

And Ratatouille (#19) is this close to the magical $200 million club. With $300,000 in the till on Friday, it's now at $198.2 million for domestic box office.

Update: No huge surprises or epiphanies at the end of August. Superbad repeats in the top spot, The Bourne Ultimatum climbs back to #2 as it chugs inexorably toward $200 million, and Mr. Bean's Holiday -- the biggest grosser of the new entries -- collects $10,121,000 at #4.

As for the animated contingent: The Simpsons Movie takes in $4.4 million in the 7th slot (with $173.4 mill and counting) while Ratatouille is poised to nose over $200 million any second now. (Currently it's at $199,036,000.)

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'd like to think that, if it hadn't been running up against all the summertime blockbusters that claim to be Number One at the box office for a week or two, Ratatouille would climb back up the Box Office charts thanks to the enlightened masses who want to go back and enjoy a great movie a second or third time.

Anonymous said...

So what was stopping people from seeing Rat more than once? There have been plenty of movies that have had fiercer competition - even some of Pixar's.
I've yet to speak to anyone that have had any desire to go back to see it more than once.
Why isn't it within the realm of possibilities that Pixar could've made a mistake this time. Though almost 200mill doesn't seem like much of a mistake until you put it up against all the Pixies' expectations.

Anonymous said...

How did they "make a mistake"? The film is excellent. I don't believe in making excuses using the marketplace for either megahits(SEE: "SHREK THE THIRD")or less-than-megahits. Sometimes a film doesn't click. Maybe it was the "rat" in "Ratatouille", maybe it was the title itself, maybe it was the release timing-who knows? But like :Iron Giant"(another excellent film) the reaction of people who actually sat through it was uniformly positive.

If movemaking was as simple as "really good movies=gazillions of dollars" we'd a)see more good movies, and b) the entire place would be run differently with fewer MBA ivy grads in the commissary. It isn't that simple, unfortunately. For animation or liveaction.

Anonymous said...

The Simpsons seems to be performing much stronger in the foreign box-office so far , but I think Ratatouille has not yet opened in the United Kingdom, Australia, and some other key markets, so we won't know how the cumulative world-wide box office take compares until later this year after Ratatouille has played out in it's foreign markets.

Domestically, The Simpsons is at $173,437,000 in week 5 of it's domestic release.

By comparison Rat was at $179,904,396 at the end of it's fifth week in release. So, the two movies seem to be tracking about the same in terms of domestic box-office numbers, with The Simpsons $6 million behind Rat's numbers at this point.

Both have been strong so far and one would expect the eventual DVD sales to be equally strong.

Anonymous said...

Oh, I just noticed that Steve Hulett already answered the question about Ratatouille's foreign release schedule in another TAG post . See:

Cry Not For Ratatouille

"Disney's "Ratatouille" turned in another tasty weekend with $11.6 million at 3,055 in 29 markets, pushing the Pixar project to $172 million overseas with half the foreign territories still to open.

"Ratatouille" will far surpass the final international cume of $218 million for "Cars," last summer's Pixar entry.

Note the words: "With half the foreign territories still to open..."

As Variety observes, this means the gourmet rat will sweep up $240 ... $260 ... $330 million in foreign revenue. Stacked on top of the domestic take, this will add up to more than half a billion before secondary revenue streams (dvds, broadcast, cable, downloads) are factored in."

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