The Hangover is an absolute machine. A $30M Friday after a $31M Thursday is stunning, really. And the business is at such a huge level that spillover to the rest of the weekend is a factor.

Everyone's acting like Kung Fu Panda made $3M on Friday, not $13M. I get that that's less than some people expected, but I would still consider it a good performance, not worthy of some of the negative hyperbole being thrown at it.

Also: how the hell does Panda's performance now spell doom for Cars 2, or whatever that conversation is implying? That is stupid. As someone else said, Pixar has a built-in adult audience, which the Panda sequel does not. It doesn't matter that Cars is the most "kiddie" Pixar film to date...people who love Pixar (such as myself) will come out for it. Plain and simple.

Pirates' big drop was to be expected. Bridesmaids held incredibly in the face of the competition.

Midnight in Paris is going to be in the top 10 for the weekend in 58 theaters, another incredible performance. And Tree of Life performed...you guessed it, incredibly!

Huge, huge, huge, HUGE weekend.

Yes, but most of my clubs fail!

AWESOME numbers for TH2 and I knew with all those Friday sellouts it was being underestimated. As for Panda 2 like I said last night it dissapoiting isn't really a big suprise considering the lazy marketing, but honestly it's opening ain't too bad, but I still don't get why Paramount opened it so damn early. It would have atleast cracked past $50M for the three day if it would have kept the Friday opening. Overall this is deffentially the weekend the boxoffice really needed.

BOM:

1 THE HANGOVER PART II 30.0 61.6 (new)
2 KUNG FU PANDA 2 13.2 19.0 (new)
3 PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: ON STRANGER TIDES 10.9 124.4 (-69%)
4 BRIDESMAIDS 4.6 73.3 (-27%)
5 THOR 2.4 152.8 (-45%)
6 FAST FIVE 1.8 191.2 (-43%)
7 SOMETHING BORROWED 0.55 33.5 (-54%)
8 PRIEST 0.50 26.1 (-65%)
9 MIDNIGHT IN PARIS 0.48 1.4 ($8,207 PTA from 58 theaters)
10 JUMPING THE BROOM 0.48 32.8 (-56%)

11 RIO 0.42 133.5 (-62%)
12 WATER FOR ELEPHANTS 0.29 53.6 (-56%)

THE TREE OF LIFE $115,000 ($28,750 PTA from 4 theaters)

http://admin.boxofficemojo.com/daily/ch ... -27&p=.htm

THE TREE OF LIFE did $115,000 in 4 theaters Friday...

http://www.boxoffice.com/statistics/bo_ ... 2011-05-28

you still make awesome call at times like Fast and Furious.

I feel like KFP2 can manage a 50% saturday increase, followed by a sub 10% drop on sunday. I think nikki's IM is low and it can still manage 50m+ over the 3-day which should be about 70m over the 5-day. A pretty weak open, but certainly not the apacolypse. It can definitely still find 200m imo. I've been calling for a disappointment for a while, Cars 2 will steal its thunder in a month when it makes more in its first 2 days than KFP2 will in its first 4.

I wonder what KFP2's run could signal for Super 8. Both are sort of being plagued by lousy marketing campaigns by Paramount.

Cars 2 is fine. If anything, it has nothing on its tails anymore.

Can we talk about Midnight in Paris and Tree of Life, btw?

Two insane art-house performances back-to-back, in May nonetheless. Pretty rare and pretty exciting.

Midnight in Paris is on 3 screens at E-Street and it sold out all of the evening shows. Crowd seemed pretty enthusiastic about the movie when I was coming out of Win-Win.

I wish Tree of Life was here. Now I'm going to have to wait a few weeks to see it.

It opens at Bethesda Row next week.

Looks to me like MIDNIGHT could be Woody's biggest movie since 1986... (unadjusted)

Wow. So The Hangover should make like $135m+ over five days. It could beat Pirates for biggest opening weekend of the year so far! Absolutely insane.

I will admit I have not seen KFP2 but reviews point to it being better than the first.

I am a fan of Pixar but I don't know how people can keep blindly defending it. Yes, they are currently the greatest studio out there, but that doesn't mean they should be given free passes for these kind of decisions. Everyone happily criticizes Dreamworks, sequels and Hollywood executives when CARS 2 IS IN THE EXACT SAME POSITION! I mean, come on, why the double standards?

Although it is really unlikely, I do hope KFP2 recovers. Dreamworks are really trying but people keep badmouthing them whilst Pixar seemed to have slipped into their comfort zone continue to be excluded from all critique.

And you're not exactly the most objective person are you, Bryan, you seem to love everything they put out. I know everyone has different tastes because some could easily criticize my liking of Prince of Persia and Sorcerer's Apprentice, but, how can anyone really like Alice in Wonderland? That was just really, really boring. It was also so, so generic for a Tim Burton movie, and Depp gave his worst performance in ages, not to mention Mia was horribly wooden and most of the cast was underused. The script was lousy and the action climax was laughable, this is Alice in Wonderland not Lord of the Rings.

Whatever, I'm just saying that praise has to be earned not just given and then see if it will proven. Yes, Pixar deserve the benefit of the doubt, but there's been a lot of negativity surrounding Cars 2 that people just keep on spinning as positives or plain ignoring it, or just keep repeating the excuse. I mean, come on, you don't have to be a skeptic to be at least a little worried.

I really don't understand Midnight at all, it's opening is actually more impressive than Tree of Life's, posting slightly higher opening day pta in 2 more theaters. With all of the hype TOL received it's amazing to me that an inconspicuous, annual Woody Allen flick is putting up better numbers. Although they both are performing excellently and I hope they keep going.

Critical reception really makes a difference for Woody Allen films. His films that are savaged or get an indifferent response never do well. But Midnight in Paris got his best reviews in years, perhaps since even the 90s. And this has a well-known, appealing cast as well.

And also, since Bridesmaids has relatively little competition for the female audience for almost another month, it could possibly scrounge up $150M if weekdays are strong. Incredible.

All of the talk of the "slump" and the "dreadful" first quarter seem so far gone with this weekend, lol? And the summer season in general so far, really.

That's exactly right...
If you look at his RT page http://www.rottentomatoes.com/celebrity/woody_allen/
all of his "fresh" movies in the last decade earned $15m or more:

82 % VICKY CRISTINA BARCELONA $23m
77 % MATCH POINT $23m
67 % SMALL TIME CROOKS $17m

His rotten movies did not...

SPC is not a very strong distributor ((Their only films to make over $20 million were Best Picture nominees), but the only other time they've had a film break out this strongly in limited release was Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. So, hopefully they won't screw it up.

Tree of Life could be in for a fantastic limited run. It's going to be very divisive, but it's also the kind of film that just gets people talking, which should be enough in the early part of its platform release to get it far. Hoenstly, I could see a There Will Be Blood kind of run, substituting the Oscar boost for that film with summer box office and minimal art house competition.

I can't wait to watch these two perform over the next month.

Apparently Kung Fu Panda 2 has only 45% of its gross in 3D. Pirates is apparently at 40%. Yeah 3D is dying fast.

I know, personally speaking, I have seen two movies in 3D (Avatar and Alice in Wonderland) since the boon started. It's not worth the extra expense to me, and I'm sure a lot of people feel the same way.

It's quite disappointing but its worth pointing out that the audience still had school on Thursday/Friday. A first week of June opening had a lot more of the audience already out of school for its predecessor. It's not a 100% apples to apples comparison for Kung Fu Panda 1 and 2.

Magnus you spelled it "Friady"

gotta get down on friady

Dreamworks thought people would just show up without an aggressive marketing push. Obviously they were wrong.

It is a huge disappointment, I can't remember another sequel to a popular kids pic that came out of the gate flailing like this.

Hangover marketed itself as an event.

BRIDESMAIDS dropping so little with huge competition from THE HANGOVER is crazy. Could this get to 140 Million? Or even 150?

MIDNIGHT IN PARIS is doing terrifically.