AOL CEO Announces $42.5 million Opening Day, The Numbers Predicts $82 million Weekend

May 16, 2003

AOL Time Warner CEO Dick Parsons had the satisfaction of reporting The Matrix Reloaded's opening day's numbers at his company's annual meeting this morning.

And what numbers they are: a new opening-day record of $42,475,000 from 3,603 theaters. That's about $3 million more than Spider-Man made on its opening day last year (see the list of biggest single days), but about a million down from Spider-Man's Saturday performance (its second day in release).

These numbers have to be taken with a pinch of salt, because they include approximately $10 million in late night shows from Wednesday - so the actual daily total was likely around $32 million. Bearing that in mind, our projection for the weekend is as follows:

DayDaily GrossCumulative Gross
Thursday$42,500,000$42,500,000
Friday$25,000,000$67,500,000
Saturday$32,000,000$97,500,000
Sunday$25,000,000$122,500,000

A Friday-Sunday weekend of around $82 million is therefore our projection right now. We'll share more news as it breaks.

Source: Reuters - Entertainment

Filed under: The Matrix Reloaded