I looked at boxofficemojo and it looks like this was the number one movie in the country Friday by a large margin.
Hollywood is very concerned about dollars per theater screen.
Dollars per Theater is a critical number for Hollywood to look at. This movie is opening in a fashion very similar to the low budget movie Bella, which did not have high budget advertising.
For example, the movie Lions for Lambs was down to $40 per movie screen this week. In other words, at each theater that showed Lions for Lambs during the week, it rakes in the huge amount of $40/day -- which is about 4 people per day to see the film... That is what is known as a bomb.
Lions for Lambs had high dollar opening weekend because of the number of screens it opened with (2,200+).
During the time I tracked Bella, there was a movie that had $6000 per screen per day.
This film only had $2500 per screen per day.
This film has had big bucks marketing, as I have seen previews of it when I saw Bella at the theater.
On the other hand, Bella was a word of mouth movie -- no big bucks marketing, but it did the dollars per screen per day as this BIG, BIG, BIG BUDGET FILM.
If I had put up $140 million, I would be really worried right now... At least for US Sales...
True, but a quick comparative analysis against other movies using a daily breakdown would show that 8 million isn't really all that great. It would trend towards a 40 million yield after 30 days, if word of mouth doesn't drive off any further attendance, which it very well could.
I used boxofficemojo to arrive at the same assessment.
You can review "Daily Box Office" to set up any comparison you'd like and see where it leads the numbers. Handy tool, to be sure.