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Keeping that in mind, let's look at four examples. The Break-Up is a 2006 release that opened to $39.2 million in its first weekend, 28% better than Knocked Up. On its first Monday, The Break-Up managed $3.9 million. After getting beaten by 28% over the weekend, Knocked Up did better than The Break-Up on its first Monday. The magic word here is OUTstanding. Other recent comedies in this vein are 2005's The 40 Year-Old Virgin, 2005's Wedding Crashers, 2004's Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story, and 2003's American Wedding. Virgin, Apatow's previous directorial effort, earned $3.1 million on its first Monday. Wedding Crashers, a movie North America loved a lot more than I did, earned $4.6 million on its first Monday. Dodgeball, a very funny Ben Stiller movie, earned $5.6 million. And American Wedding, one of the four R-rated comedies to open better than Knocked Up, earned $5.0 million.

In case you are wondering how it was doing in comparison to their opening weekends, here are those numbers. I already pointed out that The Break-Up earned $39.2 million. In addition, Wedding Crashers opened to $33.9 million, American Wedding opened to $33.4 million, Dodgeball opened to $30.1 million and The 40 Year-Old Virgin opened to $21.4 million.

As you can see, Knocked Up's Monday holds up very well in comparison to other recent summer comedy blockbusters, many of which exceeded it in terms of opening weekend performances. What is particularly noteworthy about the above is that every title I listed as a comparison earned at least $100 million. Wedding Crashers made $209.2 million, The Break-Up earned $118.7 million, Dodgeball earned $114.3 million, The 40 Year-Old Virgin earned $109.2 million and American Wedding earned $104.4 million. That's an average performance of $131.2 million with the median being $114.3 million. This is the type of company Knocked Up is keeping, indicating that it does appear to be a $100 million hit unless it unexpectedly loses steam down the road.

With regards to the other two new openers, the news is...ahem...disappointing. Mr. Brooks is already under a million, though we'll round it up to $1 million flat to keep the math clean. Gracie is already scrounging the depths of the top ten at #9, earning $145,000. It will be out of the top ten by Friday, and it might not even last that long. North America continues to reject soccer movies just as empathically as we reject the actual sport itself. David Beckham should save himself the trouble and go ahead and stay in England. All he can do in Los Angeles is get Posh Spice's picture in the paper every day...and let's be honest. That's going to happen anyway.

Daily Box Office for Monday, June 4, 2007
Rank	Film	Distributor	Daily Gross	Weekly Change	Running Total
1	Knocked Up	Universal	$4,435,695	New	$35,126,685
2	Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End	Walt Disney Pictures	$4,150,798	New	$221,696,526
3	Shrek the Third	DreamWorks	$2,626,056	New	$258,553,839
4	Mr. Brooks	MGM	$986,050	New	$11,003,117
5	Spider-Man 3	Sony/Columbia	$757,586	New	$319,099,696
6	Waitress	Fox Searchlight	$222,685	New	$9,664,596
7	28 Weeks Later	Fox Atomic	$166,926	New	$26,758,630
8	Bug	Lionsgate	$156,316	New	$6,314,368
9	Gracie	Picturehouse	$145,000	New	$1,500,000
10	Disturbia	DreamWorks	$135,446	New	$76,838,927
Box office data supplied by Exhibitor Relations

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