You Don’t Mess with Kung Fu Panda at the Box Office
Posted by John Cairns (jcairns@filmschoolrejects.com) on June 8, 2008
Well, it was a good weekend for the top two movies at the box office this weekend. Kung Fu Panda won the box office this week with a take of $60 million dollars! Meanwhile, the Adam Sandler flick You Don’t Mess With the Zohan took in $40 million. So it was a good weekend all the way around at the box office, with two movies at the top making boatloads of money. These theater owners should be pleased, because they’ve had a rough ride lately (with Speed Racer flopping, etcetera.)
In third place was Indiana Jones 4 at 22.8 million, and dropping all the way down to fourth was Sex and the City, which took a massive 62.5 per cent drop down to $21.3 million. Seems to me that all the stories out there about how this was the “most anticipated” movie of the summer were dead-on. So many people were anticipating this movie that they all went to last Friday’s screenings! Since then, Sex and the City has dropped like a rock. I wish I could say I was surprised, but I’m not.
Nor am I surprised at the top two movies — though I gather folks at the studios were surprised. But I’d been saying for weeks that I thought Kung Fu Panda would be big, and it is. The moment I found out this flick was playing in 4,100 theaters I knew these predictions of high-40s would be off by a mile. This is officially the top animated opening weekend of the year so far, topping Horton Hears a Who! We’ll see what happens when Wall-E comes out in a few weeks.
The damages:
| 1. Kung Fu Panda | $60 million |
| 2. You Don’t Mess With the Zohan | $40 million |
| 3. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull | $22 million |
| 4. Sex and the City | $21 million |
| 5. The Strangers | $9.2 million |
| 6. Iron Man | $7.5 million |
| 7. The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian | $5.5 million |
| 8. What Happens in Vegas | $3.4 million |
| 9. Baby Mama | $779,000 |
| 10. Made of Honor |
$775,000 |
Overall, Iron Man is up to $288 million and Indiana Jones 4 is catching up fast at $253 million.
That’s it for this weekend! See you next weekend for what promises to be a really big weekend, with both The Happening and The Incredible Hulk rolling out.
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