Box-Office Wrap-Up: Aug. 1 – Aug. 3, 2008

That's a perfect prediction. I'm happy here. Dark Knight passed $523m worldwide this weekend, or half a billion (as I like to say). It will never ever catch Titanic, so stow that dream, but it still evidently had enough juice to beat a clearly inferior film.

Result: 43.8 million (My rank: #2, $1.1m off)

Disaster. The last Mummy cleared $70m on its opening weekend. The lesson: when Rachel Weisz tells you to work on the script… you should probably work on the script.

Result: 42.4 million (My rank: #1, $9.8m off)

I watched Semi-Pro again last night and can't figure out how that one missed while this scored. Still, a 47% drop means that word of mouth was decent enough. Clearly the fools are out there in stronger numbers than I originally thought.

Result: 16.3 million (My rank: #3, $0.4m off)

Now this I'm proud of. Calling a 27% drop and having come in at 26% makes an Oracle feel good. This is the oddest mathematical movie of the year – the normal rules don't apply to it. I think the secret is that they aren't tapping in to the traditional film going market. It's a whole new group, hard to predict, that lives in the shadows.

Result: 13.1 million (My rank: #4, $0.4m off)

Swing Vote was supposed to finish here. Didn't happen. That movie got spanked.

Result: 6.8 million (My rank: #6, $.7m off)

Hmmm, I wonder, does this mean anything for the election? Or do people just know bad trailers when they see them?

Result: 6.3 million (My rank: #5, $4.7m off)

X-Files was supposed to be here but Fox has clearly given up. You can't really blame them – making movies is hard!

Result: 5.2 million (My rank: #8, $1.2m off)

Seriously, when can we talk about how this underperformed at the box office? Maybe a VH1 special or something.

Result: 4.7 million (My rank: #9, $.8m off)

A 66% drop from opening weekend means that everyone involved needs to start polishing their resume. If I were them I'd leave this one off.

Result: 3.4 million (My rank: #7, $1.5m off)

Boom! I end strong with an exact call. Nice work me. Hold on, need to toot the horn. Last question, do you think Warner Bros. ever prank calls Fox and offers to help them out? I know I would.

Result: 2.8 million (My rank: #10, $0m off)