Weekend Box-Office: May 20-22, 2010

Pirates
4 smashes worldwide record!

Despite breaking the record for
the biggest foreign opening of all-time, the 4th installment in
the PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN franchise actually opened with a
somewhat "disappointing" figure in North America
(despite the biggest domestic opening of the year), as it made only
$90M in its first weekend in theaters.

I know it sounds weird to say
that a film that grosses $90M in three days is
"disappointing", but when you consider that many pundits
were predicting an easy $100M opening for the film and that it
apparently cost $250M to produce (closer to $420M when
combining production and global marketing expenses, apparently) and
that its previous two installments opened with $135M and $115M
respectively…you can see how a $90M domestic opening can be
considered a little bit of a letdown, especially with films like
HANGOVER 2 and KUNG FU PANDA 2 attacking theaters next weekend.

That said, as mentioned above,
the film did manage to become the highest grossing foreign
opening of all-time, as it apparently made $256M around the world
in its first three days of release alone, which beat the previous
record set by HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE, which hade
made $236M around the world in 2009. When you combine the $256M to
its domestic take of $90M, the film combined for a grand total of
$346M, which was the 3rd
biggest worldwide opening of all-time, behind the
aforementioned POTTER flick and SPIDER-MAN 3.

The big story of the weekend
was BRIDESMAIDS though, as last week’s #2 film remained in the #2
spot this weekend, losing only 19% of its audience from last
weekend, which is an astonishing low drop. To that end, the film
has already made $60M in the first 10 days of release, which is
pretty sweet considering that it only cost $35M to produce. You
have to love the efficiency of all Apatow-produced comedies, eh?
It’s to note that two other R-rated comedies had similar
trajectories when initially released, as the original HANGOVER had
dropped 27% in its second weekend, while THE WEDDING CRASHERS has
dropped 24%. Both films went on to gross well over $200M
respectively.

THOR finally dropped out of the
#1 spot after two weeks as the head honcho, and is now closing in
on the $150M mark after three weeks of release. FAST FIVE also
continued to suck in the dollars, while inching closer and closer
to the $190M mark domestically. The two films are #1 and #2 on the
2011
top-grossing movies list (followed by three animated films in
RIO, RANGO and HOP). The one film to get knocked out of the top 10
this weekend was SOUL SURFER, a surprising hit which ended up
making $40M, despite a small $18M budget.

Next week sees two massive new
film releases joining PIRATES 4 for your hard-earned dollars, the
first of which is the sequel to the $215M-grossing KUNG FU PANDA,
while the other film is the sequel to the $277M-grossing THE
HANGOVER. It’ll be interesting to see if either sequel, KUNG
FU PANDA 2 or THE
HANGOVER PART II, can overtake PIRATES 4 in the #1 spot. In
fact, which film do you think will be the #1 movie next weekend?
VOTE
HERE!!!