Saturday, May 19, 2007

The Ogre (and Company) Rampages

Wow. All those billboards on Ventura Boulevard paid off. Shrek the Third takes in $38.1 million on Friday...

This puts the Green One (the third time around) at #7 for all-time Friday openings (and $10 million ahead of Shrek 2's opening-day numbers.)

Elsewhere on the Friday list, Spider-man 3 declines to $8,000,000, and Meet the Robinsons get knocked out of Friday's Top Ten for the second week in a row (although it climbed back to #10 for the full weekend six days ago.)

Update: Shrek takes in $122 million in its opening weekend (which should make Wall Street breathe easy.)

For those keeping score, the $122 million places Shrek the Third in the #3 position for all-time opening weekends, behind Spidey3 and Pirates 2.0. (Shrek 2 collected $108 million in its first three days.)

POC: At World's End (opening next weekend) could very well push The Green One down a notch, also slash deeply into his second weekend numbers. (Arrgh!)

This weekend wasn't kind to Wilbur Robinson and his clan. MTR took in slightly more than $500,000, and dropped way out of the Top Ten, declining 71%. The pic now has a total cume of $95.3 million (double Arrgh!).

Update 2: Daily Variety analyzes overall box office for '07:

Thanks to Shrek and Spidey, overall B.O. continued to outpace the same time frame a year ago. Top 10 pics combined for $170.7 million over the latest weekend. A year ago, the top 10 combined for $152.9 million, with "The Da Vinci Code" leading the charge followed by toon "Over the Hedge."

This summer is outpacing that of 2004 -- the biggest summer in box office history -- by 15%, or $70 million, so far...

20 comments:

Anonymous said...

WOW.

thats HUGE for an animated film.

I think its more than just the billboards in L.A.

Jeff Massie said...

I think its more than just the billboards in L.A.

It was the murals and the floor-paintings in the Universal City Red Line Station that did the trick.

Anonymous said...

nonono.. It was the dancing ogre babies at ogrebabies.com!!

Anonymous said...

Thank GOD.

Anonymous said...

The world is crazy.

Anonymous said...

YAY!

Congrats Dreamworks. From your ex-co-employees still at Disney.

Anyone want to bottle some of that stuff and come back?

Anonymous said...

I dont think so, not right now. Disney is still in need of a lot of help. I wish them the best. Maybe a good story and a 2D film will stop the slide.

Anonymous said...

Congrats to everyone at Dreamworks! that is a HUGE animated opening.

although I haven't seen the film yet.

Anonymous said...

Hey just a minute. It was just because I didn't see any advertisements is why I did'nt see the movie!

Anonymous said...

The people responsible for making the Shrek films a huge success deserve this, and virtually nobody outside Dreamworks knows who they are including all the supposed animation fans and dw haters out there. They have it completely wrong and always start out assuming the films are purely bad fast food withOUT seeing them with the eyes of a plain old audience who wants to be entertained.

It's a small group of artists, all of whom are very funny and talented and sharp who are the WRITER-story-artists of Shrek 2 and 3. Look in the credits and find out who they are--they never get the credit they should )except in their paychecks, probably).
Kudos to them!

Anonymous said...

Yeah, except that these movies are awful.

Steve Hulett said...

A subjective opinion.

Anonymous said...

"Yeah, except that these movies are awful."

The audience seems to disagree.

Anonymous said...

"A subjective opinion."
"The audience seems to disagree."

Wow... way to put me in my place.

I guess if something makes a bunch of money, that must mean that it's good.


I guess you're right. I guess these movies are awesome.

Anonymous said...

"I guess if something makes a bunch of money, that must mean that it's good."

If your job is to entertain the audience, then yep.

If you go to see a comedy, and the entire audience is laughing their asses off, you can't really argue that it doesn't work as a comedy.

Anyway, congrats to DreamWorks. I wish them all continued great success. Too bad it didn't beat Spidey. That, I'd LOVE to see!

Anonymous said...

"A thousand people doing a stupid thing is STILL a stupid thing."
- Opus the penguin

Anonymous said...

The last time I laughed at an Opus cartoon I was still buying vinyl records.

...Wait, did I say laugh? I meant smirked with mild amusement. I think it was about some joke regarding that walking Macintosh.

Shrek I laughed my ass off at. If you have to be stupid to laugh your ass off at Shrek, then I don't want to be smart.

Cheers to you, DreamWorks. Keep us laughing.

Steve Hulett said...

Like it nor not, the major point of the exercise is to make money.

Millions love Shrek. I find the films very entertaining. So (I guess) you can call me another one of the ignorant, know-nothing savages.

But remember, if you make brilliant, sensitive, oh-so-artistic films that nobody wants to see, you go broke and then out of business.

Did Walt make a second Fantasia? Of course not. He desired to keep his studio going. How commercial of him.

Anonymous said...

Since when do unions care about company profits?

anyway...

I have no problem with SHREK because it's commercial... I hate SHREK because it's just plain bad.

Anonymous said...

"Since when do unions care about company profits?"


Hmmm.... let's see. Company produces flop movie. Company lays off workers. Workers take jobs flipping burgers. Union hall gets even more flea-bitten.

I mean, have you SEEN that couch in the lobby? I've driven by worse couches on the sidewalk.

Site Meter