Ring was not so Golden

March 21, 2005

With neither of the new films meeting expectations and the holdovers falling short too, all in all it was a rather disappointing weekend at the box office. Week-to-week the box office was essentially flat - up less than 0.9% - while compared to last year it was down 2.2%. And at $1.72 billion, 2005 is now almost 1% behind 2004. But 2004 entered a prolonged slump at this point, so 2005 should have ample opportunity to regain a sizeable lead.

After Friday's box office numbers were released I figured The Ring 2 would top expectations by at least a small margin. After all, it only needed an internal multiplier of 2.62 to do so. However, by Sunday it was clear it was going to miss that figure and Monday the news got even worse. The film opened with just $35.1 million, giving it an anemic multiple of 2.3, and that's horrible even for a horror sequel. You need not look farther than the reviews to figure out why. Most likely this film will not only fail to reach $100 million, but the $90 million original prediction may also be out of reach.

On Friday I said the worst case scenario for Robots was a 40% drop-off during its sophomore stint. Well, it beat that, falling 41.7% to just $21.0 million. Even so, $100 million is still well within reach, unless the film completely collapses during Easter, and if that happened then the prospects for other digitally animated films are put into doubt.

The first film in the top five to beat expectations was The Pacifier, which brought in $12.5 million. At this pace the film should hit $100 million, but it might require a small push to do so.

Ice Princess, on the other hand, barely managed fourth place with just $6.8 million. This despite earning better than expected reviews. At this point the best case scenario has the film with a relatively flat drop-off for Easter, long legs for the rest of its run and $25 to $30 million for a final box office.

Rounding out the top five was Hitch with $6.5 million, raising its box office to just under $160 million. While this should be its last weekend in the top five, it should still earn plenty more.

Almost forgot to mention that The Aviator hit $100 million over the weekend making it the 23rd film from 2004 to do so.


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Filed under: Hitch, Robots, The Pacifier, The Aviator, The Ring Two, Ice Princess