Not realizing at the time that Flags of Our Fathers would be opening on only 1800 or so screens, I called it as the weekend’s top film a couple of days ago. Nope. The Friday numbers are in and Flags wll finish in third place with an estimated $10,749,000. The weekend’s #1 film will be The Prestige at $15,089,000 with The Departed at #2 with $13,733 and a total cume of $77,206,000. Open Season will be fourth with $8,572,000, Flicka fifth with $7,988,000, The Grudge 2 sixth with $7,910,000, Man of the Year seventh with $7,011,000 and I don’t care about the rest.
The Queen is now in 99 theatres — taking things slow and steady — and will earn about $1,464,000 this weekend with an average of about $14,8000 per situation. Marie-Antoinette opened in 859 theatres — if Sony had any kind of all-out confidence in Sofia Coppola’s film they would’ve gone bigger — and will generate about $6000 per situation for a weekend total of about $5,897,000. Running With Scissors has opened in eight theatres and has done pretty well, but I can’t read my own writing on this one so let’s wait until tomorrow.