BJs Projections:

1. Ice Age: The Meldown - 32.80m
2. The Benchwarmers - 21.40m
3. Take the Lead - 13.0m
4. Inside Man - 9.0m
5. Lucky Number Slevin - 7.2m
6. ATL - 4.5m
7. Failure to Launch - 4.1m
8. V for Vendtta - 3.4m
9. Phat Girlz - 2.8m
10. She's the Man - 2.1m (based on a 150% friday increase)
11. Stay Alive - 2.0m

Any numbers yet for Thank You for Smoking and Brick?

I was wondering that same thing...

i love that drop for ice age, now CARS will easily crush it.

BOM is in

http://boxofficemojo.com/daily/chart/

Whoa, huge jump for Slevin.

Still no She's the Man ...

EDIT - Nevermind on Slevin...

Looks to me that She's the Man will get at most $2.2 or $2.3 million this weekend. Stay Alive got $730,000 friday, and if we assume She's the Man got just below that around $700,000, it should make $2.1 million for the weekend, since it's weekend multiplier has been exactly around 3 for it's past weekends.

PEACE, Mike.

Jeez, ATL just hit a big wall. Well im glad Benchwarmers didnt do as great as people thought it would last night, but obviously still did well.

Good for Benchwarmers and Slevin, everything else did below most expectations. I knew Benchwarmers would do good, you had Schnieder and Spade who usually open in the high single digits now anyway, but you also basically had Napoleon Dynamite playing baseball. It looks like the same character and thats what brought more people in. And the fact that all of them were trying to get revenge is a decently funny concept. I'm glad for Rob and David though.

Ice age should probably rise around 40% this saturday so I think it will level off after this one. Still I wouldn't say 200 million is a lock yet, 180+ is though after this drop. But it will have the holidays so I would say 220 total.

You know, I don't know about Cars (its the one undetermined factor for me) but I'm pretty sure the highest grossing "family" movie this year is going to be Hoot. I think its going to make 200 million.

Theres too much competition by now in the 3D animation market. Every month there's a new one out. They don't stand out one from the other so much anymore. Same as the Disney 2D ones a few years back. The novelty of live-action is going to kick in again.

I wouldn't classify Benchwarmers as a rob schneider film. It seems like the appeal was more a kind of SNL nostalgia. Schneider, Spade, Lovitz and several others who are not as well known but still gave it that SNL feel.

Considering how much modern SNL sucks, it makes the older veterans seem better than they are.

Heh, I read Hoot.

If Holes made about $70M, the most I could see Hoot doing is $35-40M.

You really think so? I read it as well and think families would like it. They're pushing it harder than Holes now, though. They've set up nationwide screenings for educators, etc. And I know there is a huge national summer reading list for it that will have movi tie-ins. I dunno. There's always one "kids" movie that ranks top three for the year, and its not going to be Ice-Age 2 this year. That's why I figured eithr Cars or Hoot, since I didn't see a grat Christmas adventure line-up either. Dunno.

Hoot will struggle to $50-60 million total.

By the way, Failure to Launch is still holding pretty well and should muster a weekend around $4 million, putting it at $79 million by the end of the weekend. It should crawl beyond $90 million.

Hoot looks awful. It looks like some sort of PSA for the National Wildlife Conservation Org. rather than a studio film. It's bound to be incredibly preachy.