Big Willie Rules Weekend & Sets Personal Records Even As “Hancock” Underperforms

By Jason

July 7, 2008 in Movies

Will “Big Willie” Smith made this holiday weekend the fifth Independence Day weekend that he’s ruled the box office cementing his place as the King of the Fourth Of July. However, even as Hancock doubled the gross of the second place film, it still managed to fall below industry expectations.

Expectations were sky high for Sony’s superhero-with-an-attitude flick, Hancock, but a critical drubbing may have lowered consumer interest and impressive competition limited the film’s gross to an estimated $66M over the Friday-to-Sunday period and a relatively solid $107.3M since its launch on Tuesday night with 7pm previews. The film’s three day average wasn’t bad as it scored $16,646 from 3,965 locations. Hancock had the third biggest three day opening of the year behind Iron Man and Indiana Jones.

The five (and a half) day tally for the film was actually the fourth biggest opening for the extended Independence Day holiday frame trailing 2004’s Spider-Man 2 ($180.1M in six days), last year’s Transformers ($155.4M in six-and-a-half days), and 2005’s War of the Worlds ($112.7M in six days). Comparisons for the frame are always a bit skewed (and maybe not really fair) as the holiday falls on different days and results in both longer and shorter play periods. In all three of the above cases, however, the extended openings accounted for right at 48-49% of the eventual final domestic gross which puts Hancock on target to reach just under $220M domestically. Sony also released the film internationally this weekend and brought in an additional $78M.

Will Smith, the star, did okay for himself. Smith served as producer as well as star of the film that cost a reported $150M to produce. In the process he once again proved himself a valuable and bankable asset as he set several milestones not easily matched in Hollywood.

Hancock was Smith’s eighth consecutive number one opener.
Hancock was Smith’s eighth consecutive film to break the $100M mark.
Hancock gave Smith his seventh consecutive year of having a film reach the nine-digit mark.

In other weekend box office news:

Wall-E fell 47% to second place after a huge opening weekend last week. The Disney/Pixar animated production grossed an estimated $33.4M giving the film a hearty $128.1M in only ten days. It was a pretty big drop for a Pixar film, but the holiday weekend had something to do with that. Wall-E’s 10 day cume is still 17% ahead of last year’s Ratatouille, 10% ahead of Cars and 9% ahead of Kung Fu Panda.

Wanted fell a disappointing 60% in its second weekend to an estimated $20.6M. The $75M film has a 10 day domestic total that stands at $90.8M. The film should find its way to around $130-140M from North America. Overseas, Wanted has already amassed $155M.

Get Smart landed in fourth place this weekend with an estimated $11.1M. The comedy has taken 17 days to reach $98.1M. Fifth place film, Kung Fu Panda, on the other hand, brought in $7.5M this weekend to lift its total to $193.4M. Right now Kung Fu Panda is the third largest grossing film of the summer and looks to end up with around $220M. However, it is likely that Wall-E will surpass that gross to snatch the animation crown away from the Dreamworks film.

The Incredible Hulk continues to pace close to 2003’s Hulk. This weekend it brought in an estimated $5M and lifted its cumulative gross to $124.9M which is almost exactly the same as the $124.7M that Hulk had at the same point in its run. The Incredible Hulk opened lower but is showing stronger legs.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull brought in an estimated $3.9M and has now made it up to $306.6M putting it at number 26 on the list of all-time domestic blockbusters. It stands just ahead of, ironically, 1996’s Independence Day starring Will Smith. Of course, ticket prices were a lot cheaper back then so if you factor in the difference Independence Day would have a gross of about $490M at today’s prices.

The Love Guru fell another 68% to bring in an estimated $1.7M on the weekend. The film, budgeted at $60M, has only brought in $29.3M and looks to finish at about $31-$33M.

The Happening fell 63% and brought in an estimated $1.5M for a $62.1M total. The M. Night Shyamalan film was produced for around $55M and looks to finish with around $65M. The gross is an improvement over the $42.3M Lady In The Water scored in 2006, but will still go down as the second worst gross for Shyamalan since he became a star with The Sixth Sense.

The weekend box office wasn’t quite as formidable this weekend as the industry had hoped. The top ten films grossed an estimated $155.5M which was off 3% from last year when Transformers opened in the top spot with $70.5M over three days. However, box office grosses were up 12% from 2006’s holiday frame when Superman Returns debuted at number one with $52.5M.