Well, it seems like I was on the money…sort of. I’d predicted that Jim Carrey’s Yes Man would, indeed, take the top slot on this weekend’s box office derby, beating out Will Smith’s Seven Pounds. But I figured that Yes Man would make twice the $18.2 million it did. And that Seven Pounds would take down $23 million, rather than $16 million. But there’s no accounting for weather.
Because if you believe Al Roker, we had a mother of a storm system this weekend, blanketing much of the top half of the country in "no, we’re not leaving the house today" snow/sleet/ice. So, while Yes Man and Seven Pounds were relatively strong openers in the grand scheme of things — especially Seven Pounds, which, again, doesn’t have Big Willie blowing stuff up — it’s entirely possible that they’d have performed better under sunny skies or starry nights.
Not sure much would’ve helped The Tale of Despereaux — while it fared much better than Delgo, its $10.5 million dollar opening doesn’t bode well for a CG flick that cost a reported $60 million to make.
And the rest of the top 5 were holdovers — The Day the Earth Stood Still dropping an action-flick-standard 67 percent to sweep in another $10.1 million and Four Christmases sauntering over the $100 million mark.
More from EW:
Box Office Chart: Yes Man Is No. 1
Yes Man, Seven Pounds, Despereaux: EW Reviews
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Hey Marc – How do you account for all of your box office prediction disasters when there ISN’T unexpected bad weather?
What’s interesting is that since Seven Pounds played 700 less screens than Yes Man and since Seven Pounds had a higher per screen average, Seven Pounds technically did better than Yes Man. That said, the original predictions – even if the weather were good – were ridiculously over-estimated.
Lame Marc. You could have easily taken into account a widely anticipated major winter storm when making your predictions on Friday. Your numbers were inflated even without the weather. That first sentence was stupid and arrogant. Not your finest moment.
Despereaux had a negative cost of 60 million. So the “75+” you mentioned is inaccurate. 7 Pounds had a better per screen average. But aside from having bad weather as competition, the film also had to contend with the clearest DVD quality bootleg that hit the streets this week. Yes Man doesn’t have a “For Your Consideration” DVD quality bootleg floating around the streets. But anyhow 7 Pounds was said to be a wreck, but I thought it was another good film from Smith anchored by a strong acting performance.
OMG EW change your box-office prediction writer (i guess his name is Marc) He’s wrong every time its just embarrassing. 39 million for Yes man??? REALLY??? and a 45% drop for The day teh earth stood still???? REALLY??? I mean come on almost any box office watcher can make accurate predictions— and not be wrong every single weekend. I’m seriously considering never checking this site again. Utterly pathetic (and don’t blame teh weather for your abysmal predictions)
Week after week the predictions are quite off. I predict you’ll be reassigned by March.
I can tell you what happened to this box office for the confused editor. Yes man movie was just a mindless movie. In these tough times it was going to do well just like a Scary Movie would do. Will Smith movie did poor because if you like me seen the comercials for this film tiy were wondering what the heck the movie is about. Whoever did the trailers should be fired. Delgo 75 million on the worst animation I ever seen. A 5th grader could of done better. What did they buy with that money? Drugs, because they didnt buy computer artist who could well animate. Hollywood you want to sell movies stick to the basic three things all people like. Sex, Action, and more stuff that blows up. The basics to all marketing.
Interesting article on how the weather “hurt” movie goers/ticket sales…..
http://movies.yahoo.com/news/movies.reuters.com/audiences-say-quotyesquot-jim-carrey-comedy-reuters
I still say it’s a combo of the quality of the movies and the economy. It will be interesting to see what does well over the next few days with kids out of school before the next batch of movies are released this weekend.
Why is everyone so mad the prediction was so off? So what? How does that affect your life? I think Brad is right- if you are unhappy with the writer, then don’t read the story. I mean seriously, I just like to know what was the number 1 movie is every week to judge Americans, but other than that why do you read the story? Do you make bets based on what Marc says?
well i seen half of these damn movies free on http://www.defSpot.com and other free places online….i wonder if that has anything to do with it.
We don’t really need comments on box office projections, just disable the comment option for that. People taking the time to complain about that are just looking for something to whine about.
Go Huskers!
OMG has Twilight finally dropped out of the top 5? I am weeping into my nog. J/K ya,ll.
Many box office prognosticators were anticipating big box office numbers this weekend for Will Smith and Jim Carrey driven movies but neither trailer was overly appealing. I have a good hunch people are waiting on the Brad Pitt/Cate Blanchett movie to open. I noticed many people inquiring about Benjamin Button presale tickets today. Right now that movie is shaping up to be another Forrest Gump/Titanic box office phenom. Still, 7lbs could make a comeback. The audience was generally engaged with the characters and the story the entire time, but as I heard a group of adults exclaim as they walked out of the theater, it’s far from being the feel good Christmas movie of the year.
ouch. This guy’s calling EW out on this one… TBOJ is back and accurate as ever! http://theboxofficejunkie.com/2008/12/friday-estimates-i-got-it-rightishi.html
I find it interesting in blaming the weather for the low box office for the Jim Carrey film. Or, the economy, lol. Stop giving excuses for Carrey, the movie is a repeat of every comedy he’s made. There’s no rush to see a retread. The same economy brought in almost $70 mil for Twilight with no big hollywood names. Funny how that works. Hollywood actually providing something different to look at on film. A different take on vampires, hmmm interesting. Maybe Carrey can do something interesting again like The Truman Show. Find some other type of comedy to be in. Be creative. Once Christmas comes, his box office will go down even more. The movie wasn’t good, so don’t blame the weather or the economy. People are still going to the movies.
Just out of bitterness.
Both these films are underperformers but youll never hear anyone bash jim or will?
And a few weeks ago, when Australia did just a little less than these,Nicole Kidman’s head got chopped off. Sexist hollywood rocks!
Since when is a 67% drop standard for an action flick? Why do we apologise for duds? People saw whatever trailer they needed to see online; that’s that for Klaatu.
Everyone needs to stop blaming this on the weather. I saw Yes Man with some friends at a 7:30 showing on a Saturday, and while Orlando may not be New York or Los Angeles, but it’s also not buried under snow; the theater wasn’t even half full…on a Saturday night while the restaurants at near the theater were packed. The reason box office is low isn’t because of the weather or that people are saving money for Christmas shopping. The movies out this last weekend simply were not very good and they knew it, so they stayed away.
You’re definitely right about the weather hindering the movie-going! I had every intention of seeing Seven Pounds the day it opened, but I was one of those poor Yankees hit with a wallop of 14 inches of snow, followed by 5 inches of snow followed by subzero temperatures. By the time we shoveled out it was too damn cold to go anywhere. I love Will Smith and throw some suicidal angst into the mix and it’s my entertainment fantasy, but it still didn’t justify meeting the business end of a -20 Windchill. I was so disappointed! Good thing I had three seasons of Gilmore Girls DVDs to comfort me!
Go Big Red!
Good Luck at the Gator Bowl!
Comment on the sexism comment: Quick, name the last movie Nicole Kidman stared in that made 100 million? Answer is Batman Forever. For her large salary, she takes a hit because every movie she makes fails to live up to expectation. If Will Smith started making bomb after bomb, trust me, hollywood would turn on him too.
As for this lack luster weekend…we have seen these two movies before. Liar Liar and Pursuit of Happiness. The public is not as stupid as the movie studios hoped.
The weather? Ha ha. The movies just are NO GOOD nor are the premises fresh or interesting. Stop thinking the public is dumb. We won’t go to movies that suck. Will Smith….please. He’s becoming the Barry Manilow of film. Jim Carrey? What is this…1991? The Christmas films this year are duds, so call it like it is. Weather or not weather. I won’t even watch these on dvd.
Max is right. Nicole Kidman’s movies always underperform. I’ll refrain from saying “FLOP” but they’re closer to that than a success. Regardless of how good the picture is, she just can’t get the butts in the seats.
I went to the movie theater on this past HORRIBLY COLD weekend & saw “Milk” late Sunday afternoon…while the rooms wasn’t packed, there was a decent amount of people there. Maybe if a movie is GOOD and/or presents something a bit DIFFERENT (than cheesy romances or blow-stuff-up movies), people will spend the $10 to see it. Wotta concept, huh?
I believe that the Will Smith/ Jim Carrey movie showdown was competitive, but maybe people are holding back to watch the Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise movies that are coming out on Dec. 25th. Pitt and Cruise have heavily hyped their movies for about a month now, more than Smith and Carrey did with theirs. And maybe both Smith and Carrey’s movies were saddled with mostly mixed to bad reviews, so that kept people away. Plus, one reviewer compared Yes Man to Carrey’s more funny Liar Liar. Doing the same kind of comedy movie over and over doesn’t help to some.
The crappy reviews from critics probably had something to do with it even though most people enjoyed Yes Man and Seven Pounds. At least read reviews from people like you instead of always listening to critics- Crazy Critics is pretty helpful when you want to see if the critics are right or wrong about a movie [url]http://www.crazycritics.com/[/url]
Another Jim Carey movie where Jim acts like a total idiot for an hour and a half and the dumbed down public raised on Reality and Game shows puts money in his pocket.
Good going!
How does Joey Dashamel keep getting movie roles? She is horrible.
Jim really should get a better agent. These dumbed down movie roles are getting old.
I thought the movie had some great laughs. It’s what I would expect from a comedy in December. I loved it when Norman screamed We are Sparta http://www.entertonement.com/clips/50072/We-are-Sparta