Box Office Update 4/20-4/23: Disturbia Holds Off Fracture

Last week's dominant winner, Disturbia, held on to become a repeat offender at the top slot this weekend. It wasn't nearly as dominant as its first outing, but it did have a modest drop.It held off the latest Anthony Hopkins thriller, Fracture. The former was a surprisingly strong Hitchcock retread, and has already doubled its production budget, which will make the studio rather happy, while New Line's Fracture had been expected to pull in bigger numbers on the strength of Hopkins, but while it made a play for the top spot, it fell short by a few million. The rest of the field was all bunched up a ways back.

Blades of Glory finished in third place, and in doing so became the fourth film to cross the century mark for 2007. It joins Ghost Rider, Wild Hogs, and 300 as the early year films to reach 6 figures. It will probably top out in the $120 million range. This was a funny Will Ferrell romp that reached for a fraction of last summers Talladega Nights.

The field contained three more new releases, in addition to Fracture. Coming in at the fourth position was the horror/thriller Vacancy, starring Luke Wilson and Kate Beckinsale. This is a very effective gritty shocker that goes for atmosphere and genuine scares rather than buckets of blood, and it is very much worth seeing. Down in sixth is the movie that could have been the biggest film of the weekend, had Rogue Pictures given it a wider than 825 theater release. It topped the top ten in its per theater average, which topped $7,000. Finally there is the Adam Brody/Meg Ryan romantic comedy that failed to make much of an impact, In the Land of Women. It opened in eigth place and will probably fade quickly.

For a little off top ten news, 300 continues to add to its bottomline. It is a mere $200,000 away from Terminator 2 for number 7 on the all time R rated list. That film had a production budget of $65 million, and is working towards $500 million worldwide, Warner Brothers has to be incredibly happy with how this one turned out. Pathfinder is rocketing for the bottom, and will struggle to crack the $10 million mark. Grindhouse is going to fall way short of $30 million, and I am sure the Weinsteins are less than pleased. How about this? Way down at number 23 is Night at the Museum, which will arrive on DVD on April 24. It has accumulated a box office take of over $249 million, and will likely cross the 250 mark before it closes for good.

Next week, the last before the arrival of the big budget blockbusters, will see four films go wide in an attempt to make some cash prior to being swallowed. Those films are The Condemned which stars WWE Superstar Stone Cold Steve Austin as a man on death row entered in a game of life, David Goyer's supernatural thriller The Invisible, Jamie Kennedy as a breakdancer in Kickin' it Old Skool, and Nicolas Cage as a pre-cog in Next.

Four films dropped from the list this week: 300 (11), Pathfinder (12), The Reaping (13), and Grindhouse (14).

This Week	Last Week	Title	Wknd Gross	Overall	Week in release
1	1	Disturbia	$13,010,778	$40,205,142	2
2	N	Fracture	$11,014,657	$11,014,657	1
3	2	Blades of Glory	$7,677,569	$100,951,439	4
4	N	Vacancy	$7,603,376	$7,603,376	1
5	3	Meet the Robinsons	$6,967,089	$82,089,959	4
6	N	Hot Fuzz	$5,848,464	$5,848,464	1
7	5	Are We Done Yet?	$5,181,426	$39,572,201	3
8	N	In the Land of Women	$4,712,341	$4,712,341	1
9	4	Perfect Stranger	$4,104,808	$18,072,926	2
10	7	Wild Hogs	$2,820,440	$156,161,335	8

Box Office Predictions Recap
This was almost a mirror image of my placement for last week. In other words, my placement was pretty poor, getting two out of ten places correct. My fallacy was in underestimating the staying power of Disturbia, and over estimating Fracture and Vacancy at the top, and way overestimating the expansion of Richard Gere's The Hoax. On the other side, I did a little better in my dollar estimates, after overestimating my top two picks, five of the remainding films I had pegged within $1 million, with a few of them within half that amount. One more week to go before the summer blockbuster season gets under way, where the top films are a little easier to guess.

Anyway, here is how I picked the field:

Actual	Prediction	Title	Wknd Gross	Prediction
2	1	Fracture	$11,014,657	$18 million
4	2	Vacancy	$7,603,376	$15 million
1	3	Disturbia	$13,010,778	$14 million
3	4	Blades of Glory	$7,677,569	$8 million
5	5	Meet the Robinsons	$6,967,089	$6.5 million
17	6	The Hoax	$1,229,781	$5 million
9	7	Perfect Stranger	$4,104,808	$4.5 million
6	8	Hot Fuzz	$5,848,464	$4 million
7	9	Are We Done Yet?	$5,181,426	$3.5 million
10	10	Wild Hogs	$2,820,440	$2 million