300 IS HOT

It seemed like summer at the box office over the weekend. Not only did some areas of the West experience a heat wave and temperatures in the East surge to their warmest levels of the year, but kids packed movie theaters as if mid-year recess were in full swing. The comic book-like 300 took in an estimated $70 million, a record for a March opening. Analysts had expected a huge opening -- somewhere in the neighborhood of $45 million -- but none had predicted an opening that big. The film had a reported budget of $60 million. The results were all the more surprising since the film had an R rating. (It had also received decidedly mixed reviews from critics.) The rating appeared to have been largely ignored by Warner Bros. marketing executives who heavily hyped the film on youth-skewing MySpace.com. And in an interview with today's (Monday) Daily Variety, Greg Foster, chairman and president of IMAX, conceded, "We've been cultivating the techie crowd of 15- to 24-year-olds who play videogames and watch DVDs. ... It's a [demographic] that's difficult to get, but we finally nailed them." The film earned $3,380,000 on just 62 IMAX screens, or $54,500 per screen. Despite the fact that other films turned in rather unspectacular performances (Fox Faith's The Ultimate Gift, the only other film to open in wide release, 300 pushed the box office up some 50 percent from the comparable week a year ago. It also pushed overall ticket sales for the year up 4 percent. (They had been down about 1 percent as of last week.).

The top ten films for the weekend, according to studio estimates compiled by Media by Numbers:
1. 300, $70 million; 2. Wild Hogs, $28 million; 3. Bridge to Terabithia, $6.9 million; 4. Ghost Rider, $6.8 million; 5. Zodiac, $6.77 million; 6. The Number 23, $4.33 million; 7. Norbit, $4.3 million; 8. Music and Lyrics, $3.8 million; 9. Breach, $2.6 million; 10. Amazing Grace, $2.5 million.

12/03/2007