It may sink a little, but Wall-E is going to have enormous staying power, you watch. The utterly mediocre "Kung Fu Panda" is still holding on at 5; Wall-E's going to do much better.

I get all my numbers through HSX , the Hollywood Stock Exchange.

Of course, they're all speculative. :)

I'm a little conflicted as to what I'd like you to do about box office numbers. On the one hand, all the focus on them sucks, for all the reasons you pointed out. On the other hand, I'd be interested to see your commentary on them, and I know you won't be writing, "ZOMG, this movie only made $165 million it's opening weekend, what a huge disappointment, Tom Cruise is finished!" Is it adding to the idiotic obsession with opening weekend box office if someone writes an intelligent analysis of the numbers? I'd like to think not.

As far as Wall-E's numbers, I have to agree with MBI that it'll have great staying power. I want to go see it again, but I'm not sure if that'll happen just because there are so many other movies out or coming out that I want to see. Regardless, I'll be getting it on DVD. It will be much watched.

I wish people wouldn't look at the dollars, especially in comparing them to past records. I'd rather see number of attendees, as a film could (in theory) earn more than had people watching in comparison to previous years. I'd also love to see per-screen averages, since a good small film will always be trounced by a crappy wide release blockbuster (that gets half of the multiplex's screens...)

Then again, I'm in TV these days and I look at the estimated number of viewers (not even the real number of viewers)...

I'm biased, but I personally think that people are waiting for The Dark Knight. The marketing on that thing has been unprecedented--not on a conventional level, but on a viral level. Some theaters are already selling out of tickets. Critics want to have sex with the reels even with the film removed just for a whiff of that Dark-Knight-ness. It's got Christian Bale (who's not blazing white hot yet, but is building a slow burn of awesome), Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine, Gary Oldman, Maggie Gyllenhaal, and Heather Ledger's last performance (which everyone has been saying is worthy of Oscar-winning before the movie's even released).

It's got a motorbike, a tank, guns, and lots of explosions. It's got Batman, and the Joker, and jumping off high buildings. It is, in short, a perfect storm of box office mojo. If it doesn't break at least one kind of record, I expect that studios will seriously scale back on viral marketing for a few years.

I have to agree on The Dark Knight. I wouldn't want to be releasing a movie close to it. What I like doing after a movie has been out for awhile, is comparing what it cost to make and what it ended up grossing. I'm not even sure the numbers I look at include marketing, but its amazing how much certain movies have to make to break even.

I dislike the focus on box office too -- but I'll freely admit that when a movie I enjoyed does well on opening weekend, I'm overjoyed (and vice-versa). And, of course, watching those awful "Movie" movies earn all that money is hard to stomach.

I don't agree that filmgoers are 'waiting' for The Dark Knight, and this is one of the key reasons box office is such a downer at times: folks can go see more than one movie in a weekend if they want. Or they can go to a Tuesday matinee. I hate that films have to compete with one another for those Weekend Dollars. It's like how NBC is always putting its best shows up against CSI on Thursday nights.

Really, why don't people go to movies in the middle of the week? It's totally the best time. NO KIDS!

MaryAnn, please, use your time to write intelligent and witty stuff about movies, not about money. I understand that money is a very important part of the movie industry, but in the end the result of all the spending is what counts. "Has the pile of dollars bought us a good movie that will pay back what we have spent and lets us earn a little something in the process?" should be the question, not "We have made a crappy 150 mil movie so we want to earn at least double on the first day and if that doesn't happen then we'll make even crappier movies", which seems to be the mentality that runs Hollywood today. (Bit of a long sentence, that...)

It is true that too many people do see box-office results (particularly the opening weekend) as the be-all and end-all of cinematic success these days, but I'd argue that this isn't so much because there's too much box-office journalism, more that there's too much *bad* box-office journalism that's devoted to repeating press releases and other journalists' opinions without providing any kind of a critical perspective.

Count Shrimpula alludes to the ridiculous fuss over Mission: Impossible III's opening weekend, which I think is a good example of why we need more quality writing on this subject. In all the gallons of ink spilled over that, I think MaryAnn and Jim Emerson were the only people who stood up and said "This is ridiculous; we're talking about something that's made nearly sixty million dollars in the US alone within three days as if it's Heaven's Gate." Even now, the perception of that film is that it wasn't a success, despite the fact that it almost certainly went into the black during its cinema run. That's why you need good independent journalism about box-office figures; everyone else is just copying each other's work.

I mean, I'm biased because I do find this sort of stuff interesting. It's not life or death, but there is a sort of a glow you get when something good succeeds. It's the nearest thing to supporting a sports team that I do. And if something terrible succeeds - well, at least you've got advance warning on what Hollywood's going to be trying to emulate for the next five years.