Speed Racer, as expected, struggled at the box office on Friday, pulling in an estimated $6.5 million, targeting a $28 million weekend according to Steve Mason. Paramount’s Iron Man ended Friday with an estimated $14.5 million, meaning it will likely end the weekend $49 million richer ($175.63M cume). Here are the estimates:
Friday Estimates
1. Iron Man (Paramount) – $14.75M - $3,588 PTA - $141.38M cume
2. NEW – Speed Racer (Warner Bros) - $6.5M - $1,803 PTA - $6.5M cume
3. NEW – What Happens in Vegas (Fox) - $6.25M - $1,944 PTA - $6.25M cume
4. Made of Honor (Sony) - $2.61M - $955 PTA - $21.2M cume
5. Baby Mama (Universal) – $1.98M - $755 PTA - $36.5M cume
Three Day Estimates
1. Iron Man (Paramount) – $49M - $11,919 PTA - $175.63M cume
2. NEW – Speed Racer (Warner Bros) - $27.91M - $7,742 PTA - $27.91M cume
3. NEW – What Happens in Vegas (Fox) - $23.48M - $7,305 PTA - $23.4M cume
4. Made of Honor (Sony) - $7.83M - $2,865 PTA - $26.5M cume
5. Baby Mama (Universal) – $5.84M - $2,226 PTA - $40.5M cume
May 10th, 2008 at 12:06 am
LOL What happens in vegas almost made more than speed racer.
What a terrible flop speed racer is going to be.
I’m very proud of Iron Man, now all that has to happen is Indy Needs to fail at the box office, that’d be hilarious.
May 10th, 2008 at 2:06 am
Poor Speed…Now I’m just waiting for Batman to blow everybody out of the water ;) Hellz yeah!
May 10th, 2008 at 7:16 am
The Golden Compass opened with only $25.8m but went on to make $371m worldwide. There is a world outside of America and if Speed Racer can perform internationally like The Golden Compass did I don’t see why Warner would be unhappy. It isn’t an ideal performance for Warner but it isn’t the end.
May 10th, 2008 at 7:57 am
@adam: But you surely can’t compare “Speed Racer” and “The Golden Compass”. Just because the latter worked in Europe doesn’t mean you can expect “Speed Racer” to take an equal amount of mony.
I can only speak for Germany, but the original cartoon is completely unknown around here and it looks way too ludicrous for the average moviegoer. “The Golden Compass” on the other hand was a very popular book series and the unknowing perceived it as a crossover of “Harry Potter” and “Lord of the Rings” or something like that.
I expect “Speed Racer” to work in Asia, but it will fail in most european countries even harder than it did in America. I respect “Speed Racer” for the interesting visual experiment. It’s really something that nobody did before. But the wordwide gross of “Speed Racer” will be disastrous.
May 10th, 2008 at 9:00 am
My point was that there is a market outside of the US for a movie to make money. Just because Speed Racer isn’t well known in a country doesn’t mean anything. Most films that aren’t based on superheros, comics and books aren’t known to the audience.
May 10th, 2008 at 10:44 am
Adam,
You make a very good point, and I think the Wachowski brothers knew full well that the success of this movie would lie, in large part, to how it performed internationally.
Remember, this movie was filmed in Germany, and there is a strong German/UK flavor to it, along with the Asian flavor that Mark noted.
Personally, my wife and I *loved* the movie; my only disappointment was that Cruncher Block’s Mammoth Car turned out to be nothing more than an 18-wheeler. ;)
May 10th, 2008 at 10:46 am
Seriously, Speed Racer also flops in Singapore. Although it plays like 3 screens in every cinema in Singapore, it flops because none of them are full-house. Iron Man is instead taking the crown back. In Singapore, What Happens in Vegas really knocks out Speed Racer by having more per-screen-average, although the total box office mightn’t surpassed Speed Racer’s, since it benefits from the multiple screens.
May 10th, 2008 at 12:38 pm
“The Numbers” is reporting Speed losing out to Vegas $6.7M to $6.2M
http://www.the-numbers.com/charts/today.php
May 10th, 2008 at 12:41 pm
“The Numbers” is reporting Speed losing out to Vegas $6.7M to $6.2M
May 10th, 2008 at 1:16 pm
No no
I mean the box office in Singapore
May 10th, 2008 at 1:20 pm
I don’t know if the Golden Compass is a good example for comparisons to Speed Racer. The Gold Compass was an abnormality in that $300 million of its $370 million was generated overseas. How often do you see a movie that does hundreds of millions of dollars do about 82% of its business overseas.
May 10th, 2008 at 3:15 pm
Speed Racer wasn’t edited to well. Easily, 45min of the movie could have been to make the movie like 20times better. The second half of the movie does redeem itself though.
“Get that weak shit off my track.”
-Speed Racer
May 10th, 2008 at 4:30 pm
Its too bad the movie reviewers arnt Speed Racer fans.
Its clear that they are NOT because this film was AWESOME on about 45 levels.
I felt like a kid again watching Speed Racer.
Bomb or not this is a huge hit to me. If anything this will only mean the dvd will come out sooner!
+ The weekend isn’t over yet and there’s still time for Speed to pull ahead of “vegas”.
May 10th, 2008 at 5:47 pm
The weekend isn’t over yet.
May 11th, 2008 at 5:46 am
@Jerry Modene: I’m very glad that somebody noticed there is a huuuge market outside of the USA, but in the case of “Speed Racer” there is simply NO huge market (in fact there is nearly no market at all for that movie).
Of course I’m aware that “Speed Racer” was completely shot in the German studios (Babelsberg Studios). There are even some well known German actors in minor roles (Moritz Bleibtreu, Cosma Shiva Hagen, Benno Fürmann). But that fact doesn’t mean this movie will be successful in Germany.
I certainly don’t know why the movie has a “German flavour” to it, because I can’t spot such a thing. But one thing is for sure: The movie will flop hard in Germany. It was expected to attract ~400,000 visitors (~4 Mio.$), which is already an incredibly disappointing prediction for a blockbuster. And now the first weekend numbers are crushing. So far there are the approximately 15,000 - 30,000 visitors on first weekend. I can’t remember any blockbuster that failed so hard.
Conclusion: From a financial point of view “Speed Racer” is a fail of epic proportions and the worldwide market won’t save the movie.
May 11th, 2008 at 7:53 am
The Golden Compass’ opening weekend in Singapore was $1 million while the Speed Racer is expected to be somewhere between $200K-300K.
In other words, Speed Racer is a disappointment.
May 11th, 2008 at 2:36 pm
Somebody here said that Speed Racer is a flop and has no outside market?
What about Japan. There gonna love this film!!!!!
Go Speed Racer…..»