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The other opener to discuss remains a non-factor at the box office. License to Wed managed $2.96 million on Wednesday, an increase of 33.6% from its Tuesday debut. I have a hard time visualizing anything beyond a $10 million weekend for this movie and even that is probably ambitious. If we take another look back at 2001, the openers from that Wednesday were again Cats and Dogs and Scary Movie 2. The former film earned $9.0 million on Wednesday, $5.0 million on Thursday and $6.7 million on Friday. That's a 44.4% decrease on Thursday followed by an increase of 46.0% on Friday. Friday still represented only 74.4% of Wednesday's box office. Scary Movie 2 was a similar proposition. It earned $8.3 million on July 4th, $5.3 million on July 5th and $7.3 million on July 6th. That's a 36.1% decline on Thursday followed by a 37.7% increase on Friday. The July 6th total represents only 88% of the July 4th total. Reading between the lines, there is reason to believe that $2.96 million is the best single day of box office License to Wed has. If it's not, the best case scenario is still only a bit more on this Saturday, meaning we are looking at a weekend in the neighborhood of $7-8 million and a six day total around $15 million. That's...not good.

The rest of the top ten does bear out the theory that July 4th on a Wednesday increases box office for everything. Ratatouille spiked huge from $7.9 million on Tuesday to $10.2 million on Wednesday. That's a 29.2% increase, folks. Wow is not a strong enough word for that type of percentage change on a previous $7.9 million day. Pixar's latest release sits at $72.7 million after six days, and it does appear to be recovering nicely after the disappointing opening weekend. Word-of-mouth seems to be saving the day. In case you were wondering if this is just a family film phenomenon, here's the other data. Evan Almighty was up 41.8% to $2.84 million. Fantatic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer was up 39.4% to $1.49 million. So, yes, there is an argument to be made that it's nothing out of the ordinary. Similarly, it is also fair to say that given the much larger dollars involved, Ratatouille's $2.3 million growth is a strong sign of box office staying power, just as was the case with Transformers above.

In looking at the overall performance of the top ten, the news is all rosy. Due in large to the $29 million Transformers accrued, the top ten had combined receipts of $57.9 million and, yes, Transformers was just over half that amount. This represents an increase of $10.6 million from yesterday. That's 17.5% worth of holiday inflation for what would have otherwise been an average Wednesday. Every title in the top ten saw an increase from Tuesday. The situation will be much different with today's numbers, as everything will plummet now that folks are back at work for the most part. Everything should fall off the table with Thursday numbers before recovering nicely on Friday.

Daily Box Office for Wednesday, July 4, 2007
Rank	Film	Distributor	Daily Gross	Daily Change	Weekly Change	Running Total
1	Transformers	DreamWorks	$29,100,000	+ 6.0%	N/A	$65,700,000
2	Ratatouille	Walt Disney Pictures	$10,205,079	+ 29.2%	N/A	$72,661,432
3	Live Free or Die Hard	Twentieth Century Fox	$6,035,000	+ 35.6%	- 33.8%	$63,195,091
4	License to Wed	Warner Bros.	$2,963,228	+ 34.7%	N/A	$5,204,357
5	Evan Almighty	Universal	$2,836,080	+ 41.8%	- 15.9%	$67,915,130
6	1408	Dimension Films	$1,617,545	+ 7.8%	- 19.1%	$45,149,813
7	Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer	Twentieth Century Fox	$1,485,000	+ 39.4%	- 20.6%	$118,681,001
8	Knocked Up	Universal	$1,330,410	+ 20.9%	+ 1.2%	$125,787,150
9	Sicko	Lionsgate, The Weinstein Company	$1,160,118	+ 51.6%	N/A	$7,182,343
10	Ocean's Thirteen	Warner Bros.	$1,155,223	+ 37.5%	+ 4.9%	$104,893,591
Box office data supplied by Exhibitor Relations

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