Friday Box Office Numbers

Box Office Prophets and the movie industry websites Hollywood Reporter and Variety haven't given their weekend projections based on the Friday numbers yet. But The Numbers does have those amounts and I was right: The Pursuit of Happyness won Friday night with $9 million, Eragon was a close second with $8.6 million and Charlotte's Web was an out-and-out disaster with $3.4 million. (The near empty screening I attended at 10:10 p.m. apparently wasn't because the earlier screenings were filled with families. The trailer gave me a bad feeling - too obvious and heavy-handed. And let's face it: some books just aren't meant to be made into movies and the delicate voice of EB White's classic is one of them. Leave it alone.) Neither "Apocalypto" nor "The Holiday" is gonna shock anyone with long legs. And while Eragon was a close second, I assume word of mouth is going to be poisonous (my friend biboy called to say he'd seen it with his son and said the movie was AWFUL -- he couldn't emphasize it enough), while the word of mouth on "Happyness" should be good. And "Dreamgirls" is tearing it up on three screens. I'll post the weekend estimates when they arrive.