No, the “official” box office numbers are not in — it is still only Sunday afternoon. But thanks to Brandon Gray and the crack staff at Box Office Mojo, we do have some estimates. Those estimates, which are generally pretty accurate, show Zack Snyder’s epic 300 raking in $70 million dollars, a total that would make it the biggest March opening in history. Here are the estimates for the top 5:
Rank. Movie Title (Distributor)
Weekend Gross | Theaters | Total Gross | Week #
1. 300 (Warner Bros.)
$70.0 million | 3,103 | $70.0 million | 1
2. Wild Hogs (Buena Vista)
$28.0 million | 3,296 | $77.4 million | 2
3. Bridge to Terabithia (Buena Vista)
$6.9 million | 3,210 | $67.0 million | 4
4. Ghost Rider (Sony / Columbia)
$6.8 million | 3,347 | $104.1 million | 4
5. Zodiac (Paramount)
$6.8 million | 2,379 | $23.7 million | 2
Wild Hogs held onto the non-R rated lead, keeping the populous of non-fanboys and action lovers happy, while every other flick dropped below the $10 million mark. Now, these estimates may come as a small surprise seeing as Warner Brothers and many others initially placed 300’s opening in the $40-$50 million mark, but after a $27 million dollar Friday, $70 mil. wasn’t too far out of reach. Of course, we will anxiously await the final numbers that will be released tomorrow, but at this point 300’s success is one for the record books.
Related Reading:
- Review: 300
- Exclusive-ish 300 Giveaway!
- The Anti-300 Debate?
- Are you Ready to Dine in Hell?
- Weekend Update: 300 Marches Alone
March 11th, 2007 at 4:39 pm
Can you tell us what the highest grossing R rated film had for an opening weekend? The movie to beat was Ice Age: The meltdown right? Didn’t it show on a lot more screens? Comparing the number of screens showing R rated and the number showing PG rated would give us a better idea of how big this really is. I know that I wanted to see it more than once, but I only bought advance tickets for 1 showing. It was sold out the other 2 times that I tried to see it.
March 11th, 2007 at 7:38 pm
300 deserved to do well. It was a much better film that I had expected, and it really looked incredible on IMAX. I wrote a review of it here if you are interested:
http://lestdarknessfall.blogspot.com/2007/03/300-fantasy-movie-about-thermopylae.html
I heard from another site that they only spent $65 million on it, so it looks like this should be a very profitable film. I also read that it played on 850 fewer screens than Ice Age, so Candide is correct.