Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby is doing much better than those projected figures in the low to high 30s that showed up on Thursday and Friday. It did $18,254,000 last night (i.e, Friday) and one estimate is projecting $49,287,000 by Sunday night. The reason is that’s doing extremely well in the red-state boonies. If this pattern holds you can bet Columbia will claim a first-weekend figure of just over $50 million. Sunday is always weaker for a redneck white-bread comedy like this, which — face it — won’t be attracting much support from African American filmgoers. Movies that play stronger on Sunday tend to have an “urban tint”, which Talladega definitely lacks.
