WASC can beat Firewall.

But, I can't think of anything; it must be years. Even the top 3 is hard to find. I didn't check every weekend, but I'm pretty sure it was last when Underworld opened over 2 years ago. It also happened a week before that with Once Upon a Time in Mexico and twice earlier in 2003 led by Phone Booth and The Recruit/Final Destination 2. We look to have that locked up this week.

You think Firewall will make less than $9 million? How much are you expecting for WASC?

Sure there are some who went too high for FW and too low for PP, but I mostly think this weekend's derby will be decided on holdovers for the most part. With four new openings, someone could suck on two of them and another beat them handily, but then the former could nail the other two and the latter could not...Too easy of a chance to cancel out.

well looking at your projections guys, it looks like im going to have a very nice derby ! I really hope you are all right, like always!!

sucks for Firewall, but it looks very generic to me

Firewall might drop under 10m. I have WASC with at least 10m; it will probably be over 11m IMO. We have not seen a movie to skew so much towards teen girls with schools in since Mean Girls. That increased near 500%, and while this won't quite match that, I think we can see 350%-450%.

Any more projections?

Comments:

Pretty good for Final Destination 3, Curious George, and Pink Panther. It does look kind of like deja vu all over again for the Final Destination franchise though as it looks to be narrowly beat out by another opener (The Recruit and Pink Panther). How disappointing. If I were New Line I'd purposely overestimate its Sunday just so it "wins" the weekend with the estimates. Those are the numbers most hear anyway.

How disappointing for Firewall. Harrison Ford really is going to be upset as he promoted the film quite a bit. The aforementioned problem of a lame title didn't help matters.

Unless everyone does bad or only 1 or 2 new movies have been released, you usually need at least a 75% average for the group of openers to even give yourself a shot in the derby. Having 6 other films around 90% can bring you up big time, that's usually why I focus more of my time on holdovers rather than openers (I'm guessing most do that)

If FD3 makes over 20 million opening weekend does that guarantee a fourth? I hope so.

not realy, the holdovers are easy so most of my focus goes into predicting well for the openers.

pretty much

Holdovers are moderately easy until you get down to films under 5 million, where being off by .5 million can cost you a ton of percentage points. Even if the holdovers are easy, I want to make sure I have them down pat so that I have something to save my ass when an opener surprises.

Yeah, I could predict most holdovers in my sleep. There's not much room for improvement, but with openers you can have an edge if just a few here or there really go your way.

I'll admit I'm pulling some ideas out of my ass. I usually just use a whole lot of data and try to analyze as many possibilities for each movie as possible. I don't really have any technique except using the same system for deciding most OW's, and staying right in the middle of high and low predictions unless I get a gut instinct something will overperform. (i.e. most weren't pegging Stranger for over 16 million, where I originally had it, but a simple instinct told me to raise it to 18.1, still not a great score, but a move that kept me in 11th rather than 50 more places back)

Final Destination 3 794, +122, B
The Pink Panther 701, +112, B-
Curious George 286, +36, B
Firewall 251, +26, B- (up from C+)

PEACE, Mike.

how many more hours till the final update?

2 more updates left until final numbers for today.

PEACE, Mike.

FD's ratio will be much closer to 150 then 100, imo.

Firewall isn't doing THAT bad. If it gets to 300 reviews, a Flightplan 64 ratio would give it 4.6 million Friday and 13-14 million for the weekend. There's been worse.

Final Destination 3 843, +49, B
The Pink Panther 752, +51, B-
Curious George 296, +10, B+ (up from B)
Firewall 264, +13, B-

Final Update:

Final Destination 3 869, +26, B
The Pink Panther 768, +16, B-
Curious George 299, +3, B+
Firewall 268, +4, B-

Perhaps around $6.6 million for FD3 (130 ratio), $7.0 million for The Pink Panther (110 ratio), $3.3 million for George (90 ratio), and $3.5 million for Firewall (75 ratio)? Could be closer for PP and FD3; both have sell-out reports. Pink Panther would come out on top due to better weekend multipler. George would defeat Firewall overall also due to better multiplier. Anyways, just some thrown out guesses. Not really sure what ratios are expected. Xiayun has been mysteriously absent.

PEACE, Mike.

Xiayun is covering WonderCon.

If only I knew what that meant.

PEACE, Mike.

It's a convention in San Diego I believe. Look for the coverage on the main site.

any chance Pink Panther is not doing that well? like lower on Fri, but maybe topping Fri...

why did i think PP was going to bomb.....

Final projections:

Final Destination 3 - 7.8m - The minor link won't have too much of an effect on the 4 hour ratio. I really don't think it takes itself seriously enough to have an average ratio for the genre; the audience is a bit different. Ratio of 112; 29 4-hour.
Pink Panther - 6.3m - Frontpage picture will have more of an effect. Ratios of 122/32.
Curious George - 3.8m - I'd go with a 4 hour ratio of 11 otherwise. Might be 14.5 here. Overall it should have a low ratio of 79 or so.
Firewall - 2.8m - It shouldn't have done so poorly over the last few hours even without the frontpage. This won't be another Flightplan in terms of the ratio. I'll give it 95 overall, but the BO number could be lower as that's a 4-hour ratio of only 17. I'm tempted to predict 2.6m-2.7m. Ouch.