Scooby-Doo is Scrappy

Friday Numbers Analysis for June 14-16th

By Kim Hollis

Re rule!

Of the three new films that entered the dog-eat-dog summer marketplace, one emerged victorious as top dog, another had some bark to match his friend's bite, and the third simply rolled over and played dead.

Scooby-Doo

Scooby-Doo and the rest of the gang from Mystery, Inc. earned an estimated $18.25 million on Friday. This is a fairly unprecedented number for a children's summer film, but it's pretty clear that the youth-oriented marketing has amounted to a payoff of truckloads of Scooby Snacks for Warner Bros. From all appearances, the kiddies love the film, too, as CinemaScores from the under-21 crowd were solid A's. I can attest to this fact, as the children in the theater on Friday were absolutely howling with laughter and repeating almost every line that came out of Scooby's mouth.

Kid flicks tend to have weekend multipliers of 3.0 or greater; however, there are some additional forces at work here. For films with ultra-high Friday numbers such as this one, the Friday-to-Sunday multiplier generally will be a bit lower, as there is an apparent rush to see the film on the first day. Even so, as you can see from the chart below, even the biggest family films fall only slightly short of that mark. In the case of Scooby, we're going to split the difference and estimate a 3.37 weekend multiplier, similar to that of Ice Age, which means Scooby and Co. should wind up with a spooky weekend total of $61.5 million. Jinkies.


Internal Multiplier Comparisons for Scooby-Doo
Film
Multiplier
Monsters, Inc.
3.60
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
2.79
How the Grinch Stole Christmas
3.62
Spider-Man
2.91
Ice Age
3.37
Shrek
3.67
Tarzan
2.96


The Bourne Identity

Coming in a distant-but-still impressive second place this weekend is The Bourne Identity, the big-screen adaptation of Robert Ludlum's 1980 spy thriller. The film stars Matt Damon, who is following in the recent footsteps of his attached-at-the-hip buddy Ben Affleck. While the two co-stars of Good Will Hunting, Dogma, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, etc., are now trying to gain separate identities as action heroes, they have gotten off to an ironic start. Affleck's The Sum of All Fears, the fourth movie adaptation of a Tom Clancy book, earned $10.05 million on its first Friday, while Damon's The Bourne Identity made an estimated $8.81 million. Keep in mind that early reports are often slightly off, so it's likely that Damon's first daily total will be within a few hundred thousand of Affleck's.

It bears noting that The Sum of All Fears is an already-established franchise, so the similar performance of The Bourne Identity is very strong by comparison. With its release this weekend receiving dazzling CinemaScores and very positive reviews and its Friday debut being quite strong, we can reasonably expect Jason Bourne's performance this summer to merit sequels. This franchise launch appears successful even if the film might be hard-pressed to significantly exceed its $75 million budget. Look for The Bourne Identity to have a multiplier of 3.27 for an opening frame of $28.8 million.


Internal Multiplier Comparisons for The Bourne Identity
Film
Multiplier
Tomorrow Never Dies
2.93
The World Is Not Enough
2.93
Swordfish
3.11
The Sum of All Fears
3.27
The Thomas Crown Affair
3.59


Windtalkers

Finishing last amongst the openers this weekend is John Woo's Windtalkers. The World War II film starring Nicolas Cage finished with $4.39 million on Friday, which is pretty clearly a huge disappointment for a film with a mind-blowing negative cost of $120 million. The release of the film was delayed several times. It was originally scheduled to hit theaters last summer, but just wasn't ready and was therefore pushed to a November release. After the events of 9/11, the studio made the decision to move it back a bit further to spring, and after a glut of war-themed films popped up for release in the same time frame, it was pushed one final time to its current June date. Instead of being in the position of starting the trend, Windtalkers gave every appearance of being the last of a line of several war-themed films to see theatrical release, including Behind Enemy Lines, Black Hawk Down, Hart's War and We Were Soldiers.

Multipliers for movies in this genre are varied, but summer is generally fairly kind in this regard. The easiest comparison and the one that makes the most sense logically is last summer's Captain Corelli's Mandolin, particularly since it features the same star and a portion of the draw was the lush cinematography and a director that is fairly well-known amongst hard-core movie lovers. With a multiplier of 3.1, Windtalkers should be able to finish with a lackluster $13.61 million by the time the weekend is through.


Internal Multiplier Comparisons for Windtalkers
Film
Multiplier
We Were Soldiers
3.65
Hart's War
3.40
Black Hawk Down
2.61
Enemy at the Gates
2.87
Behind Enemy Lines
2.92
Saving Private Ryan
3.15
The Patriot
3.22
Captain Corelli's Mandolin
3.09

Notable Holdovers

Among the notable holdovers is the aforementioned The Sum of All Fears, which fell 35.7% from last Friday. The Ben Affleck-as-young-Jack Ryan formula worked, as the film has already covered its modest $68 million budget and should be quite profitable for Paramount. As far as last weekend's openers, The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood suffered a drop that is surprisingly precipitous for its genre, with its $3.28 million Friday amounting to depreciation of 45.1%. Bad Company is forqued, with a decline of 50.8% on its second Friday for a total daily number of $1.91 million. The film is poised to be one of the biggest financial failures of normally-bulletproof Jerry Bruckheimer's career.

 

Friday-to-Friday Drop-Offs
Film
Fri-Fri Depreciation
Estimated 3-Day Weekend Depreciation
The Sum of All Fears
-35.7%
-35%
Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood
-45.1%
-39%
Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones
-39.2%
-40%
Spider-Man
-19.4%
-25%
Bad Company
-50.8%
-48%
Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron
-39.1%
-33%
Undercover Brother
-43.6%
-40%



Extrapolated Estimates for the Top Ten
Projected
Rank
Film
Estimated 3-Day Gross (M$)
Total Gross by Sunday (M$)
1
Scooby-Doo
61.5
61.5
2
The Bourne Identity
28.8
28.8
3
Windtalkers
13.6
13.6
4
The Sum of All Fears
12.5
83.5
5
The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood
10.0
35.1
6
Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones
8.4
269.7
7
Spider-Man
7.7
382.7
8
Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron
6.2
64.0
9
Bad Company
5.7
21.4
10
Undercover Brother
4.4
31.1

Internal multiplier = A comparison of Friday's numbers to the rest of the weekend. So if A Beautiful Mind makes $5.1 million on Friday and $17.8 million for the whole weekend, then its internal multiplier is 3.5 ($17.8 million / $5.1 million = 3.5). Analysts use this number in reverse to predict weekend numbers from Friday's numbers.