No matter how you look at the numbers, Iron Man (Paramount) is in the stratosphere, but I still believe that this first film from Marvel Studios will reach $100M for the weekend. My final prediction on Wednesday night was for the John Favreau-directed superhero pic to soar to $102M from Thursday night previews through Sunday. Some print and internet journalists thought I was crazy, and they were sticking with something more along the lines of $70M-$80M.
As it turns out, the extraordinary industry tracking that showed that Iron Man was out-performing last summer’s Transformers in pre-opening audience surveys, has held true. Plus all of the speculation about the new video game release Grand Theft Auto IV dampening the movie’s opening weekend performance was, as many studio execs told me, a non-issue.
Paramount now tells me this morning that Iron Man did $32.8M on Friday, which gets them to $38M when you add in the $5.2M from Thursday night reviews. The studio is projecting $95M by Monday morning. Now the question is will the film increase or decrease Friday-to-Saturday. My money is on a slight increase, which will get the picture past $100M.
There are 3 reasons why Iron Man can be reasonably be expected to get a Saturday increase. First, at some of the most lucrative megaplexes in the country there were 1am and 1:15am screenings of Iron Man added on the fly to handle high demand. All of the ticket sales from these late showings will be added to the Saturday total. Also, Cinema Score exit surveys show that audiences are giving Iron Man A+/A grades across the board. People love the movie, and, in the era of the text message, positive word-of-mouth travels faster than ever. Finally, its PG-13 rating makes it family-friendly, and it should receive a huge matinee bounce today.
It is now safe to say that Iron Man may be headed for $300M domestic, which will begin Paramount’s $1 billion summer. Indiana Jones & the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull could get to $400M, followed by $200M domestic for Kung Fu Panda in June, a possible $100M+ for Mike Myers’ Love Guru in July and a more certain $100M+ for Ben Stiller’s Tropic Thunder set for August 15.
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May 3rd, 2008 at 12:35 pm
Sweetness! To bad it won’t come close to Spiderman 3 or Aquaman for that matter.
May 3rd, 2008 at 12:49 pm
Dustin: Aquaman LOL.
The point is that it was only expected to me 40-60M opening weekend depending on who you talk to, and even 60M would have been a huge success for Paramount Marvel. 90-100M means that the sequel will be much bigger in scale for sure.
May 3rd, 2008 at 12:58 pm
i’m thinking the love guru will come nowhere near 100mil.
May 3rd, 2008 at 1:07 pm
Entourage FTW Dustin.
May 3rd, 2008 at 1:46 pm
Aquaman. LOL sweet
May 3rd, 2008 at 1:59 pm
I have to admit though that i am very impressed with John Favreau and the dedication he has done with this. Let’s hope he is attached to the next one, which is probably true.
I really hope this movie enters the 100 + mark, because there is serious potential. So much work went into this film, Marvel Studios, ILM and others. I hope they give a lot of effort for the second one.
May 3rd, 2008 at 5:44 pm
And in other new, more innocent civilian men, women and little children died today from U.S. weaponry in Iraq.
May 3rd, 2008 at 6:16 pm
we should send in iron man
May 3rd, 2008 at 6:23 pm
Peter - Hello.
I have nothing to say about this post, I just wanted to let you know that I have talked with some of my friends who also frequent your site, and we all agree that you should put at least one video blog up a week. They are very funny. Thank you in advance Peter, goodbye Peter.
May 3rd, 2008 at 6:43 pm
Does anybody know how much this movie cost to make?
May 3rd, 2008 at 7:27 pm
Love Guru will not make 100+ at all. FLOP.
May 3rd, 2008 at 7:57 pm
I actually would only give Iron man about a 7.5, The action was great, it was VERY funny, but it was just a little TOO unrealistic in some parts, and there wasn’t much character development overall. Again, it WAS a good movie, there SHOULD be a sequel, but unfortunately I’m not “Raving” about it like so many others are. Sam Jackson as Nick Fury was Awsome!
May 3rd, 2008 at 8:09 pm
@ Cuffor
And in other, other news - Insurgents kill dozens of their own countrymen, women and children in coordinated suicide bomb attacks.
Iron Man was sweet. I especially loved it when he killed all of those terrorists/insurgents when they were holding the women and children hostage. Do American soldiers do that? No.
May 3rd, 2008 at 8:38 pm
I only want to know one thing: Did sexman like it?
May 3rd, 2008 at 10:03 pm
Connor: took the words right out of my mouth.
May 3rd, 2008 at 11:43 pm
Connor and Jimbo: Wow. You guys are a piece of work. Kidding or not, implying that American servicemembers (real life heroes who put their life on the line so YOU can blog on the internet about whatever you want) aren’t as great as Iron Man (a fictional character created by a comic book company) is just wrong. I mean, can you honestly stand there and feel like you’re in the right.
If you actually believe what you’re saying, then why don’t you sign up and make a difference? Exactly. Just sit there and bitch.
BTW, I loved Iron Man. It was great…
May 3rd, 2008 at 11:52 pm
Trevor, I’m pretty sure we all realize it’s not realistic to expect real-life soldiers to behave like Iron Man. It’s all in good fun.
Anyway, I haven’t actually heard that many people “rave” about it as being the perfect movie (and many admit it’s not as good as, say, Spider-Man - which I find hard to believe), but pretty much everyone recommends it. That might be the only push it needs.