Weekend Estimates: Moviegoers Have Appetite for Ratatouille
July 1, 2007
Ratatouille came out the comfortable winner at the box office this weekend, earning a solid $47.2 million, according to Disney's estimate released on Sunday morning.
That's not a bad start, but it is the worst opening performance by a Pixar movie since A Bug's Life (excluding the single theater preview weekend of Toy Story 2).
Worse, if you adjust for ticket price inflation, it's the weakest opening ever for Pixar in terms of tickets sold per theater.
Disney execs are upbeat, however, pointing to the very favorable reviews and long holiday weekend to come as reasons to be cheerful.
We'll have a much better idea of Ratatouille's long term prospects by this time next week.
Live Free or Die Hard took its expected place at number two in the chart with an estimated opening of $33.2 million.
Its accumulated $48.2 million box office since it opened certainly suggests that debuting on Wednesday was a smart move -- there's little chance it would have earned that Friday-Sunday if it had gone head-to-head with Ratatouille.
Lower down the chart, Sicko was clearly the star, earning $4.5 million in just 441 theaters, and landing in 9th place on the chart, ahead of Evening, which earned a so-so $3.5 million from nearly 1,000 theaters.
Filed under: Weekend Estimates