The Bus

1 PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: AT WORLD'S END Buena Vista 3,100 $17,000,000 (estimate) -- / $5,484 $17,000,000 / 0
2 SHREK THE THIRD Paramount (DreamWorks) $144,478,827 / 6 $5,859,631 +1.5% / $1,422 $150,338,458 / 7
3 SPIDER-MAN 3 Sony / Columbia 4,324 $1,702,576 +9.5% / $394 $289,642,322 / 21
4 28 WEEKS LATER Fox Atomic 2,305 $430,973 -15.5% / $187 $21,121,250 / 14
5 GEORGIA RULE Universal 2,531 $355,125 -6.3% / $140 $14,424,970 / 14
6 DISTURBIA Paramount (DreamWorks) $246,681 -12.5% / $97 $72,510,077 / 42

$17 million for POTC3 on Thursday night showings.

Here's some anecdotal evidence. When Dead Man's Chest came out, as of around this time, every theatre in the state had showings sold out through the afternoon and evening (say, 5pm to 8pm).

I'm still seeing sellouts, although not as many as when DMC came out (which had no Thursday evening release). One theatre doesn't have any sell outs, period, for today. (For comparison, my local theatre had probably about 8 showings until midnight yesterday, all of which sold out).

Zodiac_Speaking

$17mil on thursday wow!

It'll cheat but it will get $170+ this weekend.

Bug might get $4mil.

Matthew Chmiel

Wow. We posted our threads at the same time. I'll give you the thread as you got in first.

Yesterday afternoon, most theaters in Vegas had sold out of their first evening shows for At World's End. I went to a theater last night -- playing the film on seven screens -- with a showtime each half-an-hour -- and all the showings until 1am were sold out by time I got to the theater at 9pm (thank God for Fandango).

Fandango hasn't listed sold-out showings yet for Vegas, but I bet you the moment high schoolers get out of class (which was 10 minutes ago for Vegas teens), that'll start to change.

And remember, only the shows from 8pm - 11:59pm count for that $17 million total. Everything after midnight will count for today (where I bet it scored a painless additional $3-5 million).

PopcornTreeCt

No way it makes $170 million.

Dr. DVD

Didn't see sold out signs for AWE at a theater I passed by tonight, but all movies were well underway so they might have taken the signs down. Last night when I went EVERYTHING was sold out. I actually hope this one does well, as I liked it better than DMC. I just hope it's a case where the DMC crowd comes back as opposed to the case of Matrix Reloaded where people saw the second one and decided they had enough.

RichC2

It won't break any 3 day records this weekend, I know I wasn't the only that felt burnt by DMC and won't be seeing this one in theaters. That said, it will do extremely well and is likely to break any Memorial Day record.

Didn't help that the 3rd was a truly awful movie.

Matthew Chmiel

FRIDAY ESTIMATES

1. PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: AT WORLDS END BVI 4,362 43,000,000 9,858 n/a 57,000,000
2. SHREK THE THIRD DREAMWORKS 4,122 14,360,000 3,484 -63% 164,698,631
3. SPIDER-MAN 3 SONY 4,324 3,837,000 887 -52% 293,478,576
4. BUG LIONS GATE 812 1,105,000 1,361 n/a 1,105,000
5. WAITRESS FOX SEARCHLIGHT 116 768,000 6,621 169% 3,277,318
6. 28 WEEKS LATER FOX ATOMIC 2,305 696,000 302 -58% 21,792,973
7. DISTURBIA PARAMOUNT 2,547 533,000 209 -56% 73,094,808
8. GEORGIA RULE UNIVERSAL 2,531 475,000 188 -58% 14,890,125
9. FRACTURE NEW LINE 1,607 297,000 185 -56% 35,854,000
10. AWAY FROM HER MGM 174 197,000 1,132 n/a 1,818,341

Not gonna lie, I have a feeling that Shrek the Third might not cross the $300 million mark (or if it does -- it might be barely passing the $300 million mark).

Maxflier

The immense popularity of the Pirates movies baffles me.

rexinnih

I like them.

maingon

I love the pirates flicks.

Matthew Chmiel

I thought the first one was great.

Second and third? Not so much.

JumpCutz

I thought the first one was good not great.

Second and third...

Maxflier

The first one bored me to death, which is why it surprises me that so many people lined up in droves opening day to watch the sequels. I have not watched the 2nd or 3rd ones.
I went to see 28 Weeks Later yesterday afternoon and it was literally me and 1 other dude in that movie, everyone else was going to see Pirates i'm sure.

Matthew Chmiel

I thought the second one was alright (I actually didn't even catch it until it was on DVD -- I was on vacation when the film came out and all my friends saw it without me), but it still had major flaws with it's pacing. The third one comes in and completely takes any problems the second one had and multiplied it by three.

To be honest, I am not a big fan of where the first film has a self-contained story and sequels decide to make a self-contained story over the course of two films. The only trilogy where I believe that succeeded was Back to the Future. Even the original Star Wars trilogy had a real fucking turd in there (Return of the Jedi).

Supermallet

I still say AWE is a significant improvement over DMC, and DMC wasn't too bad of a movie itself. I love all three and I'm glad it's doing so well.

Mr. Cinema

Spidey should cross the $300 million mark on Sunday, then get a little boost on Memorial day, and then it's chump change from here on.

Terrell

Don't feel bad! I'm the same way with LOTR. Didn't like any of them, and I generally love films like that. I love POTC films.

Dr. DVD

I wonder if AWE would have broken Spidey's record if it had eschewed with the Thursday evening showings and only started at midnight on Friday (aka early that morning)?

Joe Molotov

Me too, but it's not because I don't like them.

Mr. Cinema

Yeah, I thought all 3 of the big May films would pass $300 million, but Shrek looks like it'll end up with maybe less than $50 million for the 3-day total. I don't think it'll have enough legs to pass $275 million. Good, but probably not what they were expecting.

Supermallet

Hopefully it makes low enough numbers that Dreamworks thinks twice about making any more.

Matthew Chmiel

You're kidding right?

Besides the actors' salaries -- the films only cost around $80 million a pop. Plus tie in all the money that DreamWorks makes from all the DVDs, CDs, merchandise, and whatever else. It's a fucking goldmine for them that they will run dry.

Supermallet

A man can dream, can't he?

jeffkjoe

And how is crossing the 300 million dollar mark some sort of small accomplishment?

Big film, independent film, animated film, Pixar film, that's nothing to sneeze at.

Matthew Chmiel

I love it how you attack me whenever I mention Shrek.

What I was getting at, before you quickly started attacking me again, was that it's following up a sequel that made nearly $430 million at the box office. The film has the capacity to do such numbers -- but it's not. Could it be Pirates opening and Spidey trying to pull in whatever numbers it can before June? Could it be the negative word of mouth audience and critics have? There's a whole slew of reasons one can think of why it's not doing those big numbers.

Everyone was expecting coming into May that the big three would all do well over $300 million. However, as it stands now, Spidey will only do a tiny bit over $300 million and it might take Shrek some effort to reach that line.