Box Office Update 8/17-8/19: Superbad Proves to Be, Well, Super Bad! (In a Good Way)

Well, Superbad paid off on the promise of raunchy comedy with a heart. It opened north of $30 million making this only the second August with three consecutive $30 million openings. It was also only the fourth R rated film to do so. The movie opened to strong reviews and strong box office despite the lack of any big name stars leading the cast. It is definitely a funny movie, and the story really pays off with nice crafted characters. Hopefully its opening weekend will translate to a good run at the theaters. So, if you haven't seen it and would like to laugh for two hours, make sure you see this movie!

Only one other new movie had enough gas to make it to the top ten. That one movie was The Invasion, a movie I expected to have a much stronger showing than it did. The new take on Invasion of the Body Snatchers crawled to fifth place, and struggled to do that. Of course, I didn't help it this weekend. I will just have to make it up next week. For a movie that struggled even more than this, slip down to 12th and see The Last Legion sitting there in all of its uninteresting glory. I would have thought the sword and sandal tale of Excalibur would have drawn better, but then the advertising seemed to be rather light for it.

As for the returning films, all of them performed quite well. Only one of them slipped more than 50%, Rush Hour 3. That dip for the Chan/Tucker team-up had to be expected as we get further into August. Not to mention that it is not all that good. At the other end of the spectrum there is HairsprayWeek Last, a big time crowd pleaser which is having very strong week to week holds. This would have surprised me if you tried to convince me before it opened. However, I have seen the film and it definitely delivers, much more than I would have cared to admit.

Next week will see Mr. Bean's Holiday, The Nanny Diaries, Resurrecting the Champ, and WAR opening wide.

Two movies dropped off the top ten this week: No Reservations (11) and Daddy Day Camp (15).

This Week	Last Week	Title	Wknd Gross	Overall	Week in release
1	N	Superbad	$33,052,411	$33,052,411	1
2	1	Rush Hour 3	$21,353,361	$87,676,529	2
3	2	The Bourne Ultimatum	$19,874,370	$164,694,690	3
4	3	The Simpsons Movie	$6,829,648	$165,271,443	4
5	N	The Invasion	$5,951,409	$5,951,409	1
6	4	Stardust	$5,651,343	$19,493,894	2
7	5	Hairspray	$4,502,455	$100,805,456	5
8	6	Underdog	$3,848,791	$31,927,488	3
9	8	Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix	$3,656,379	$278,762,117	6
10	7	I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry	$3,601,545	$110,484,335	5

Box Office Predictions Recap
Well, I goofed on The Invasion pretty badly. I thought for sure that it would perform stronger than it did. Did the bad early reviews impact it that much? Perhaps it would have done better had it been released in the Fall, or maybe even Winter. That goof pales in comparison to my my wild overestimation of The Last Legion. That one failed to even crack the top ten as it failed to register on any level. On the other hand, I did pretty good on my dollar prediction for Superbad, Rush Hour 3, and The Bourne Ultimatum. Heck, for the most part, my other dollar predictions weren't that far off.

Anyway, here is how I picked the field:

Actual	Prediction	Title	Wknd Gross	Prediction
1	1	Superbad	$33,052,411	$28 million
5	2	The Invasion	$5,951,409	$22 million
2	3	Rush Hour 3	$21,353,361	$18 million
3	4	The Bourne Ultimatum	$19,874,370	$16 million
12	5	The Last Legion	$2,746,312	$11 million
4	6	The Simpsons Movie	$6,829,648	$6.5 million
6	7	Stardust	$5,651,343	$4.5 million
7	8	Hairspray	$4,502,455	$4 million
8	9	Underdog	$3,848,791	$3 million
9	10	Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix	$3,656,379	$2 million