Duo Debuts on Wednesday

June 23, 2004

Two new films, White Chicks and Fahrenheit 9/11 open tonight, but you'd be hard pressed to find any other similarity between them.

White Chicks opens in 2412 theatres, which is not a lot considering how common 3000+ opening are these days. And perhaps the theatre owners who didn't bother to book the movie made the right decision as the film is generating awful reviews, even the positive reviews are being rather negative. Granted, people who go to see these types of movies generally are not swayed by critics, but bad word of mouth can quickly kill a movie. And this movie makes Scary Movie 2 look like Scary Movie 1.

Also a factor is the ratings; since the makers were aiming for a PG-13 rating a lot of the extreme gross out humor is missing. And that's probably going to upset more fans than it will bring in other moviegoers. In other words, the lack of controversial content will hurt the film's chances.

All things considered, White Chicks should earn $6 million tonight, $4 million on Thursday and $16 million during the weekend. But that's assuming Warner Bros. was able to get the word out that its opening on Wednesday. If not, look for weaker mid-day numbers but a stronger weekend.

The other movie opening tonight is Fahrenheit 9/11, which opens in only 2 theatres before expanding to 868 on Friday. While the film is earning very good reviews they are not quite up to those earned by Michael Moore previous documentaries. However, this film will rely less on reviews and more on controversy, and it has a lot of that.

There were attempts by right wing groups to get theatre owners to boycott the movie, claiming the film was anti-American. There were even reports that they were successful by keeping the number of theatres willing to take the movie to under 500, compared to the 700 the distributor, Fellowship Adventure Group, were aiming for. However, with the official theatre well over 800 it appears they declaration of victory was premature.

So with strong controversy pushing the film ahead, look for $100,000 tonight in just 2 theatres, (not enough to hit the top ten) and $12 million over the weekend, (enough to hit the top five.)


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Filed under: Fahrenheit 9/11, White Chicks