Daily Box Office Analysis for July 17, 2007
By David Mumpower
July 18, 2007
BoxOfficeProphets.com
The other facet of yesterday's discussion that requires follow-up would be the comparisons to prior Potter movies. Considering that Order of the Phoenix was well out in front of its predecessors in this measurable for Monday, I understand why some of you might be wondering about the relevance of this. That's a valid question. My explanation is that if we see Order of the Phoenix's gap lessen, we will recognize the first signs of slippage. Conversely, if it continues to hold a significant lead, the first tell-tale signs of legs will be proven empirically. There will, however, be one difficulty with these comparisons.
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone earned $7.654 million on its first Tuesday, an increase of 15.2% from its first Monday of $6.643 million. The Tuesday total represents $9.198 million in 2007 dollars, meaning that the gap closed from 30.5% on Monday to only 7.9% on Tuesday. Why is this? Order of the Phoenix did not do anything wrong. Instead, Sorcerer's Stone had the advantage of holiday inflation on its first Tuesday. That week in 2001 was Thanksgiving, and box office slowly creeps up throughout the week during that period instead of doing the reverse (starting well on Monday and Tuesday then declining significantly on Wednesday and Thursday). For similar reasons, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is not a great model, either. Its first Tuesday also occurred during Thanksgiving with the result being a Monday-to-Tuesday increase of 11.8% to $9.002 million.
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets did not have the benefit of this behavior. Its first Tuesday did not occur during Thanksgiving week. As such, it is a much more engaging comparison. The second Potter movie's first Tuesday saw a drop of 10.9% to $4.742 million. Order of the Phoenix's 12% decline is right in line with this behavior. The best comparison of all, of course, is Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban since that title is the only previous Potter release to occur in the summer. Its first Tuesday of $7.247 million represents a decline of 14.0% from its first Monday of $8.428 million; ergo, Order of the Phoenix has slightly exceeded it in terms of carryover appeal.
Summarizing the above, we now have a set of six early warning signals for Order of the Phoenix. Five of them favor the title and the other one is a virtual wash. This means that the latest Harry Potter movie is, at a minimum, matching the performances of prior tentpole releases of similar nature. Given how shaky the legs have been for most major 2007 summer releases, this is fantastic news for Warner Bros. Of course, it remains to be seen how the introduction of the seventh Harry Potter novel into the equation alters the movie-going behavior of the Potter fan-base.
Box office for the top ten comprised $22,069,618 worth of revenue yesterday. This is down 3.3% from Monday's $22,815,181. Receipts are up 10.1% from last Tuesday's $20,039,328. The best Tuesday of July, of course, was the holiday-inflated July 3rd, which also included the first full day of Transformers. It had a massive total of $49.270 million. In case you need a refresher, the Tuesdays for June were as follows. June 19th had the biggest top ten tally of $16,320,988; June 26th was second with $15,248,237; next is June 12th with $14,068,392; finishing worst is June 5th with $13,073,045. Perusing this data should give a fine overview of how summer box office behaves. Each week sees the introduction of new products with the end result being a deeper, more robust top ten. This is demonstrated by the improved bottom line in terms of total revenue.