Sylvester Stallone‘s Rocky Balboa, as everyone knows by now, was the #1 film yesterday with earnings of 6.4 million, or $2300 a print. Don’t expect it to stay on top, though, after Night at the Museum opens on Friday. The latest tracking has Museum at 84, 44 and 13, but that’s without kids factored in — it’s looking like the weekend’s biggest earner to me. The Good Shepherd is at 75, 38, 9 — not awful, fair, middling. And We Are Marshall is looking a bit weaker at 69, 32, 6.
Of the two Xmas day openers, Dreamgirls is the stronger at 82, 33 and 6 compared to 45, 24 and 5 for Black Christmas. The likely audience breakdown for Dreamgirls is very much female (35-plus). The fact that it’s opening Monday in 800 mostly urban and/or black-supported theatres obviously indicates DreamWorks knows where the concentrated interest is (so far). If they had a huge across-the-board hit waiting to happen, they’d be opening in 2000 theatres-plus…but they’re not. Do the math.