Weekend Box Office

Due to the holidays, studio estimates for box office numbers were running a little late this week, but the numbers are in and we've got them for you. Frankly, if you're reading this you should be out honoring this fine nation's armed forces and those who have served and died in their ranks rather than surfing the net, but if you insist on being here, read on. There are two things in particular worth pointing out: Revenge of the Sith's hefty drop off, and the return of the box office to unusually low numbers.

Sith blew the doors of the box office last weekend with a massive take of $108 million, and that doesn't even count the midnight mania that drew it a record $50 million on its opening day. It's not abnormal for movies to take hits after their opening weekend, but Sith is dying a faster death than usual. It's predecessor films actually did better percentage-wise on their second weekends than Revenge of the Sith, an interesting twist given that Episodes I and II were practically panned in comparison to the great word-of-mouth, five star review extravaganza that the final installment has enjoyed.

However, Star Wars isn't the only one taking a hit. The two big openers this week, Madagascar and The Longest Yard aren't shaping up to receive the kinds of numbers they should, especially for the summer season. As an example, Ice Age and Shark's Tale, both animated features in the same genre as Madagascar, each opened with mid 40 million dollar weekends without breaking a sweat. To boot, those movies opened in the cinematic doldrums of March and October respectively. Madagascar did just about as well, but that's at the top of the summer season...on a holiday weekend. While this doesn't mark a total crash of the film industry, it is a continued downward trend that began to appear earlier this year and doesn't seem to be breaking given the summer excitement.

This all may just be the result of people travelling over the Memorial Day weekend. I'd personally like to think American's are spending more time this holiday at home rather than rushing out to the movies. More than likely though, this is a continued indicator that the box office is in for a slow summer despite a lot of exciting films making their way onto the scene.