With an 8.5 Thurs, I see:

Fri: 13.6
Sat: 17.7
Sun: 14.5
Total: 45.8 -27% ALL HAIL NOLAN!

Anything over $8.8 mil today would be good.

Anything over $9.3 mil would be excellent.

Anything over $9.8 mil would be Eva Mendes and Yvonne Strahovski at my undisclosed Vienna hotel for the weekend.

That would be CORRECT!

For anyone's interest, here are the first four weekends for The Sixth Sense adjusted for inflation:

Aug 6–8 $41,755,124.59 - 2,161 $41,755,124.59 1
Aug 13–15 $40,321,196.55 -3.4% 2,395 $109,017,745.93 2
Aug 20–22 $37,480,819.61 -7% 2,688 $168,243,097.23 3
Aug 27–29 $31,454,376.88 -16.1% 2,763 $217,300,891.51 4

That's why all Inception needs is half the legs of SS to make $350m....

I'm now 100% sure its dropping less than 25% over the weekend and potentially under 20%

I hate to be negative, but comparisons to Wedding Crashers and Sixth Sense are only going to cause sad feelings. Inception has strong IMAX showings, something which will limit its Friday increase. I think it can at least beat The Dark Knight's and increase around 50%. I'm hoping for around $40 million this weekend. Wedding Crashers (60% over 25) and The Sixth Sense also had a much older audience, which would lead to a better Friday increase.

Why are you so certain? I think there's a pretty good chance its weekend will be a bit deflated by ultra strong weekdays, kinda like TDK and TS3. The other thing hurting its upcoming weekend is the opening of Salt. While I think the two can co-exist because Salt is going after a demographic that apparently doesn't like Inception very much (ages 35 and higher), I still think Salt will hurt it some. Even if WOM isn't great for Inception with the older demographic, there are still some who are willing to check it out but they might decide on Salt instead.

Only because the WOM and chatter around this film seems extremely strong and unlike TDK and TS3, this is not a sequel and it opened much smaller than those record breaking films.

That said, my biggest concern is Salt taking away some of the audience - but I do think there is room for both. In that case, its quite possible that the third weekend is where Inception has a super hold. We'll see.

Um...if that happens, Magnus will be eating his shit...

Word, +1. Inception is just warming up, I'm waiting for this freak to show it's real legs .

Salt will be crushed by the freaky legs of Inception this weekend.



Make no doubt about it, this is an event movie. The 15-34 crowd is in love with Inception. This alone will cause lots of repeat viewings, especially from females that are going gaga for the love story and tragic elements. The WOM will continue to be intense, eventually pulling in older audiences (that might be hesistant about the movie) like a black hole. Nothing will escape the pull of Inception's WOM. First it started with the 15-34 crowd, then the WOM spread like wildfire to celebrities, who in turn are just amplifying the WOM from the 15-34 crowd creating a bigger black hole. Eventually the WOM will reach some of the older audiences, even the ones that don't have internet. This big WOM is also causing some media headlines that mention this great WOM, which in turn feeds the WOM black hole and pulls in more and more of the general audience.

^

Alright, calm down there, sparky.

He's making Inception sound like a cult, not a movie.

This influx of mojoers has been good.

I loved the movie, obviously, but hearing OTT praise about how people are masturbating to its perfection and turning the film into some sort of nationwide movement is going to get old REALLY fast.

The WOM is real, is it not? Inception has achieved almost 1 million tweets since it opened, think about that for a moment. This year, the only movies that have been in such company were Iron Man 2 and Eclipse on Twitter. Inception has been a trending topic on Twitter for almost 9 days straight. Eclipse quickly vanished as a trending topic on Twitter soon after it opened, same with Iron Man 2.

IMDB still has Inception at #3 on it's All-time Top 250 list, and the average score for Inception is a 9.3 with over 50,000 votes. IMDB gets millions and millions of visitors to its site every month.

The Hangover became an event movie, did it not? Why is Inception any different?

Libs is not saying it's any different. It is headed for $250-350m, which is great. Leave it at that.

Well that was basically the point of my post; to prove that Inception is an event movie similar to The Hangover.

Oops.

Ouch

Hmm just curious, if this is going to do 300m for an original concept, has that never been done before ?

How short term is your memory?

ok I meant other than Avatar because most of us don't consider that to be an original concept including me

LOL. Whatever. There's still Star Wars, Finding Nemo, E.T., etc...

Inception wouldn't do anything extraordinary if it crossed $300 million.