This is landmark: Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest did $54.2 million yesterday counting the take from Thursday’s midnight screenings. One projection from a rival studio for the three-day weekend is $138,600,000. Spider-Man‘s three-day record of $114.8 million has been busted…blasted apart. Cue Paul Dergarabedian!

That’s because today’s (Saturday, 7.8) take is expected to be in the realm of $42 million on top of an estimate of $38 million for Sunday…figure $40 million per day. Friday was nearly $55 million (another studio is estimating that figure) because of Thursday midnight AND the eager-beaver, opening-day-adrenaline factor. And the inevitable word-of-mouth dropoff is another factor in the projections for today and Sunday.
Poor Superman Returns did only $7,032,000, and is being projected to do about $23,414,000 for the weekend. That’s roughly a 57% plunge from last Friday and a projected 55% downtown for the weekend. Considering the size of last weekend’s take during a major holiday sojourn plus the competition, the word is “give Superman a break…it didn’t collapse and everyone knew it couldn’t sustain in the face of Pirates,” etc.
The Devil Wears Prada did an estimated $4,928,000, which looks like a 40% to 45% drop from last weekend’s $27 million haul. I had heard an earlier Friday estimate of $6 million, and I said to myself, “Whoa…good hold.” Then I heard the $4,928,000 figure.
Click is expected to do $12,345,000 for the weekend. The $9,043,000 that Cars is expected to do will push it over the $200 million mark. Nacho Libre will do about $3,684,000 and The Break-Up…I can’t find yesterday’s figure but it’ll end up on Sunday evening with about $114 million.