Post-Labor Pains

September 5, 2008

Can Tropic Thunder do it? Can Tropic Thunder match The Dark Knight's winning streak? ... Probably not, but it has a shot, thanks to the weakness in the new releases this week (or should that say new release?), and the historically slow post-Labor Day weekend.

There's only one wide release this week, but the consensus is that Bangkok Dangerous will be the number one, although analysts are not so sure it will be able to top $10 million or not, which means it wouldn't have to under-perform by too much for it to miss first place. Looking at the film's reviews, and its star, it might. At the moment the film has only 22% positive reviews, which is weak, even for a September release. Additionally, Nicolas Cage has not had a lot of luck when it comes to opening movies lately. Outside of the two National Treasure films and Ghost Rider, most of his films have not hit $10 million during their opening weekends. Look for $9 million over the weekend, more or less, and $25 million overall.

Tropic Thunder is marching along to $100 million. It won't get there this weekend, but it should pull in more than $7 million and that will cut the gap in half, putting it about a week away from $100 million. So far 2008 has only produced thirteen $100 million hits, but there are several summer hits that are just on the cusp of that mark, and Tropic Thunder won't be the first of them, or the last of them, to hit that milestone.

The Dark Knight should remain in third place and pull in between $5 million and $6 million. This would lift its already impressive box office to $512 million.

The House Bunny should be a tiny fraction behind and add just under $5 million to its running tally, more or less. The comedy has already matched its production budget and is well on its way to showing a profit.

Meanwhile, The Traitor should round out the top five with just over $4 million for the weekend and $17.5 million after two. This is hardly a rousing success, but it is better than many late summer releases perform.

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Filed under: The Dark Knight, Tropic Thunder, The House Bunny, Traitor, Bangkok Dangerous