*** Official "2003 Box Office Prediction and Discussion" Thread (1 Viewer)

[Chuck Mayer]

ROTK will be a important cinematic milestone, and I am certain it will cross 350 million. As others have stated, it will in all likelihood be the second film ever to cross the 1 billion international mark. But it won't come close to Titanic itself. I do believe it will comfortably nestle into the second spot for a very long haul though.
Big opening numbers for a 3.3 hours film
MLS will do fine, Julia Roberts can open a film. Cold Mountain is the film most likely to suffer, I believe.
Take care,
Chuck

 

[Ben Osborne]

Many people have pointed out the parallel between Braveheart and Aragorn's speech in front of the black gate. What about these?:

1. Gandalf riding out to meet the Gondorian soldier's returning from Osgiliath. It has some similarities to Lawrence of Arabia when Lawrence is returning from "The Sun's Anvil" with Gasim on his camel, and is greeting by another man on a camel coming from the opposite direction.

2. When Gandalf is making his stand at the gates of Minith Tiras and says "Whatever comes through those gates, stand your ground," is similar to Gladiator when Maximus says "Whatever comes through those gates, we have a better chance of surviving is we stick together."

Does anyone else notice those similarities? If so, are they intentional homages, or are the parallels coincidental?

 

[Kevin Grey]

Yes but for all the filmmakers want to deny it MLS is being perceived as a chick-flick, same as Two Weeks notice.

 

[Chris]

I don't know if it will do much to spur "The Hobbit" but it's great that it is doing so well

 

[Malcolm R]

I agree. If anything, I'd think it would make whoever owns the rights dig their heels in deeper for a bigger chunk of cash.

On the other hand, you have to think that if "The Hobbit" went forward with any other team than Peter Jackson and WETA, that it would be totally shunned at the box office anyway. From that perspective, the rights holders should be willing to work with PJ and crew as at this point I think they're the only team that could make a credible film.

 

[Craig]

Apparently the problem in gaining the rights to "The Hobbit", is due to the fact the people involved with Tolkien's estate really hate Jackson's interpretation of LOTR. But who knows? Quoting that great philosopher, Ms. C. Lauper, "money changes everything".

 

[Malcolm R]

From discussions in other threads, it has been said that Tolkien's estate has no control over film rights to "The Hobbit" anymore. I think it's a tug-of-war between film studios/producers instead.

 

[Peter Kim]

Quoting that great philosopher, Ms. C. Lauper, "money changes everything".

My points exactly!
While there may be initial curiosity about a non-Wingnut Hobbit, eventually the lack of Jackson's imprimatur would become too egregious and would subject the film to novelty failure. But I'd like to be proven wrong.
I would hope that the current fiscal enmity between camps would ultimately result in a King Solomon-like epiphany, where at least one studio would see that no one wins by playing tug-of-war. Although, to give any studio the benefit of doubt with regards to altruism may be too much.

 

[Craig]

Boxofficemojo has ROTK at $17 million for Thursday.

 

[Tino]

Friday estimates:

1. ROTK...$22.5 million
2. Mona Lisa Smile ..$4.1 million.

 

[TerryRL]

Friday Estimates

#1 "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King" $22.4 million ($73.9 million)
#2 "Mona Lisa Smile" $4.1 million
#3 "Something's Gotta Give" $3.3 million ($25.3 million)
#4 "The Last Samurai" $2.1 million ($53.8 million)
#5 "Stuck on You" $1.6 million ($13.3 million)
#6 "Elf" $1.4 million ($150.7 million)
#7 "Bad Santa" $1.3 million ($39.1 million)
#8 "Love Don't Cost a Thing" $1.1 million ($8.6 million)
#9 "The Haunted Mansion" $956K ($55.8 million)
#10 "Honey" $857K ($21.7 million)

To no one's surprise, 'The Return of the King' easily snagged the top spot at the box office. The movie took in $22.4 million yesterday and has earned just under $74 million since it's release on Wednesday. The $22.4 million Friday take betters the $19.2 million first Friday haul of 'The Two Towers' last year, as well as the $14.2 million 'The Fellowship of the Ring' collected on the same day back in 2001. ROTK is on course to earn in the area of $70 million for the Friday-Sunday portion of it's opening, and more than $120 million for it's 5-day total.

The latest from mega-star Julia Roberts, "Mona Lisa Smile", had a decent debut of more than $4 million. The Sony film should end the weekend with between $12 and $15 million. As with most other Julia Roberts movies, the studio is expecting this one to have a leggy run in theaters.

Taking a moderate 37% dip from it's Friday-to-Friday totals was last weekend's top flick, "Something's Gotta Give". The movie has so far taken in more than $25 million and seems to be headed for a weekend total of about $10 million.

WB's epic, "The Last Samurai", took a 50% hit off of it's pace from a week ago. The film has earned close to $54 million thus far and should end with weekend with about $7 million.

Fox's comedy "Stuck on You" also took a 50% hit and may end up being overtaken by "Elf" for the fifth slot by the end of the weekend.

 

[Colin Jacobson]

Apparently the problem in gaining the rights to "The Hobbit", is due to the fact the people involved with Tolkien's estate really hate Jackson's interpretation of LOTR. But who knows? Quoting that great philosopher, Ms. C. Lauper, "money changes everything".

Yup! Whether or not the Tolkien folks liked the interpretation, those movies sold a LOT of books. I bought the damned thing and I NEVER had the slightest interest in LOTR prior to the movies. Yeah, the book series always made a lot of money, but it has to have escalated wildly over the last two+ years...

 

[Brian W.]

I think ROTK will hit at least $360 million, though it's hard to say. If it wins Best Picture, maybe more. That could keep it in theaters another several weeks and add maybe $10-20 million to its gross.

 

[Brian W.]

Tolkien Enterprises, a division of the Saul Zaentz Company, owns certain worldwide exclusive rights to the literary works The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, including the titles, the names of the characters, places, scenes, things and events appearing in the works, and certain short phrases and sayings from the works. We license these for use as trademarks and service marks in connection with various lines of merchandise. The Saul Zaentz Company also owns exclusive rights to certain copyrightable elements of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, including, among other things, film and legitimate stage rights.

So the problem, as I understand it, is that New Line DOES have the rights to film "The Hobbit," but that the distribution rights have been held for a long time by MGM/UA.
In fact, Jackson just said that a couple weeks ago, and said something like, "I'm sure something can be worked out. If I were New Line and MGM, I'd be talking."

 

[TerryRL]

Weekend Estimates

#1 "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King" $73.6 million ($125.0 million)
#2 "Mona Lisa Smile" $12.0 million
#3 "Something's Gotta Give" $11.5 million ($33.5 million)
#4 "The Last Samurai" $7.3 million ($59.0 million)
#5 "Stuck on You" $5.4 million ($17.1 million)
#6 "Elf" $5.0 million ($154.3 million)
#7 "Bad Santa" $4.25 million ($42.0 million)
#8 "The Haunted Mansion" $4.24 million ($59.1 million)
#9 "Love Don't Cost a Thing" $3.9 million ($11.4 million)
#10 "Honey" $2.5 million ($23.4 million)

The crown jewel of New Line's mammoth 'Lord of the Rings' trilogy blew away the competition this weekend as it established a new benchmark for December openings. This weekend saw the coronation of 'The Return of the King'. The epic adventure took in more than $73 million during the Friday thru Sunday portion of it's opening, while it's 5-day mark of $125 million establishes the biggest 5-day march ever for a film debuting on a Wednesday, passing the $105.7 million mark of 1999's 'The Phantom Menace'. The $73.6 million mark ranks as the 7th biggest 3-day tally ever, as well as the biggest December opening in history (passing the $62 million start of 'The Two Towers' last year). 'The Lord of the Rings' trilogy now account for the top 3 biggest openings for the month of December.

ROTK also tied the speed record of 'Attack of the Clones' as it passed the $100 million mark after only 4 days in theaters. That's second best to the 3 day $100 million treks of "Spider-Man" and "The Matrix Reloaded". All signs are pointing to ROTK becoming the biggest hit of the franchise, as well as only the second film in history to earn over $1 billion worldwide at the box office (it'll still likely be a distant second to the massive $1.8 billion haul of "Titanic"). However, the biggest question mark for the film is if Peter Jackson and New Line are going to walk away with the Best Picture Oscar in February. The movie received 4 Golden Globe nominations and how it fares there could be an indicator of what to expect on Oscar night. In any event, ROTK is going to end up becoming the biggest hit movie of 2003, as well as taking it's place as one of the biggest film trilogies in Hollywood history.

Opening a very distant second was Sony's "Mona Lisa Smile". The latest from mega-star Julia Roberts took in a solid $12 million. Sony expects this one to have strong legs in the coming weeks as they hope to garner some serious Oscar attention.

Last week's top flick, "Something's Gotta Give", fell to third this weekend. The romantic comedy took only a 28% hit and saw it's total rise to $33 million. This one is going to have a very healthy run in theaters.

WB's epic "The Last Samurai" took a 48% hit this weekend and saw it's cume rise to $59 million. It should still end up squeaking past the $100 million mark.

Fox's comedy "Stuck on You" fell by more than 42% this weekend. It's so far tallied only $17 million and a final haul in the area of $35 million is now expected.

New Line had other reasons to celebrate this weekend as their comedy smash "Elf" saw only a 17% dip in business (which was the smallest percentage decline of the top 10). The movie has so far tallied just over $154 million and should top out in the area of $175-$185 million. Who would've thought that Will Farrell's little Christmas comedy would go on to out gross box office "sure things" like 'The Cat in the Hat', 'Master and Commander', "The Last Samurai", "The Haunted Mansion" and "The Matrix Revolutions"? Hats off to both Farrell and New Line for delivering one of the year's biggest surprise hits.

Speaking of surprise hits, Dimention's "Bad Santa" continues to show strong legs. The dark comedy took only a 29% hit this weekend as it saw it's total climb to $42 million. A final domestic tally of more than $60 million is now expected.

Disney's "The Haunted Mansion" took a moderate 31% hit in business this weekend. The family film has so far earned just over $59 million and is expected to end up in the area of $75-$85 million, making it a solid hit for the studio that Walt built.

WB's hip-hop retelling of the '80s comedy "Can't Buy Me Love" took a moderate 37% hit this weekend. The comedy has only earned a little more than $11 million and will probably end up with about $25 mil after it's run concludes.

Universal's "Honey" rounds out the top 10. The "Flashdance" wannabe took a 46% hit and has so far taken in more than $23 million. It should end up with more than $35 mil, giving Universal a solid (in unspectacular) hit movie.

Next weekend's Christmas holiday will bring about a whole host of would-be challengers to ROTK's box office crown. Fox's Steve Martin comedy "Cheaper by the Dozen", Miramax's latest Oscar hopeful "Cold Mountain", the Ben Affleck/John Woo collaboration "Paycheck" and Universal's "Peter Pan" all go wide on Christmas Day, while Oscar hopefuls "Big Fish" and "In America" will expand their releases.

ROTK will probably easily retain the top slot with a 3-day tally north of $40 million. Still, don't be surprised if "Peter Pan" and "Cheaper by the Dozen" both have very solid showings next weekend. After garnering 7 Golden Globe nominations (more than any other film this year), it's going to be very interesting to see how well "Cold Mountain" does next week. I'm not expecting too much from Paramount's "Paycheck" though. No disrespect to Affleck or Woo, but Paramount has had a very forgettable year. We'll see what happens.

 

[Edwin Pereyra]

#1 "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King" $73.6 million ($125.0 million)

Close to the $130M number I had predicted. The midnight screenings of $8M threw me off as I thought that was a separate gross from Wednesday's $34M take.

Very impressive so far.

~Edwin

 

[TerryRL]

Judging from the critical and public response to the movie thus far, I'd be surprised if ROTK took in anything less than $350 million domestically.

 

[Kevin Grey]

I have some real doubts about Mona Lisa Smile's legs. The movie actually dropped Friday to Saturday which is very rare except for really frontloaded genre movies and sequels where everyone sees it opening night. That is not typical behavior for a movie skewing to older audiences.

 

[David Echo]

From cnn.com -

"Return of the King" did not set records for best domestic opening weekend, but it put up the highest numbers ever for a worldwide debut. The film added $121 million in 28 other countries since Wednesday for a global total of $246.1 million, surpassing the $202.8 million five-day opening for "The Matrix Revolutions" last month.

"That is amazing. The worldwide sweep of this movie is unprecedented. To have a quarter-billion-dollar gross in five days shows what a broad swath this movie cuts," said Paul Dergarabedian, president of box-office tracker Exhibitor Relations. "These would be good numbers for a film to do in its entire run, but this is just the beginning."

The worldwide record was all the more remarkable considering "Matrix Revolutions" opened virtually everywhere simultaneously, while "Return of the King" has yet to debut in many markets, among them Japan, Italy and Australia.

The fast start boosts the prospects for "Return of the King" to top the $861 million total worldwide gross for "Fellowship of the Ring" and $921 million take for "Two Towers." "Return of the King" could become the second movie to top $1 billion worldwide, after "Titanic" ($1.8 billion).

ZOINKS! Making $246.1 million worldwide in 5 days!

Dave

Btw, It's not often that I'm right so I just have to point out that this time my predictions were right on the money - ROTK passing $100 million on Saturday and hitting $125 million for the 5 day day total! Woo-Hoo!

 

[Matt Stone]

Wow, that's a very high world-wide take. It will be interesting to see what kind of legs this film has. I'm used to the Reloaded/Revolutions flicks dropping off the face of the planet after the opening weekend. I think it would be nice to see ROTK play well into March like Fellowship did.