Brian Damage
04-11-2010, 06:47 PM
LOS ANGELES — Steve Carell and Tina Fey are in a box-office clash with the gods of Mount Olympus.
No. 1 bragging rights for the weekend were too close to call Sunday, with 20th Century Fox estimating a $27.1 million debut for Carell and Fey's comedy "Date Night" and Warner Bros. reporting the action tale "Clash of the Titans" at $26.9 million.
Rankings will be sorted out Monday when studios release final numbers, which can vary by $1 million or more for some films compared with Sunday estimates.
Warner executives said they tracked "Clash of the Titans" as No. 1 for a second straight weekend, with "Date Night" trailing by about $1 million.
"I'm not complaining about it," said Dan Fellman, head of distribution for Warner. "They're certainly entitled to their own projection, and we'll see. Maybe they're right and we're wrong. Monday will tell."
Photo finishes are rare for the No. 1 spot at the box office, where one movie usually is the clear winner.
Weekend projections include fairly hard figures for Friday and Saturday but estimates for how much a movie will take in on Sunday. Studios base those estimates on such factors as how similar movies performed in past weekends.
Studios sometimes grumble that competitors inflate their Sunday numbers to make a debut look stronger.
"You can't do that," said Bert Livingston, a 20th Century Fox distribution executive. "What you do is you look up history, you come up with your best-guess scenario. The number is the number. Whatever it is, if it ends up being No. 1 or 5 or 6, we just estimate our numbers."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/11/date-night-in-box-office-_n_533376.html
No. 1 bragging rights for the weekend were too close to call Sunday, with 20th Century Fox estimating a $27.1 million debut for Carell and Fey's comedy "Date Night" and Warner Bros. reporting the action tale "Clash of the Titans" at $26.9 million.
Rankings will be sorted out Monday when studios release final numbers, which can vary by $1 million or more for some films compared with Sunday estimates.
Warner executives said they tracked "Clash of the Titans" as No. 1 for a second straight weekend, with "Date Night" trailing by about $1 million.
"I'm not complaining about it," said Dan Fellman, head of distribution for Warner. "They're certainly entitled to their own projection, and we'll see. Maybe they're right and we're wrong. Monday will tell."
Photo finishes are rare for the No. 1 spot at the box office, where one movie usually is the clear winner.
Weekend projections include fairly hard figures for Friday and Saturday but estimates for how much a movie will take in on Sunday. Studios base those estimates on such factors as how similar movies performed in past weekends.
Studios sometimes grumble that competitors inflate their Sunday numbers to make a debut look stronger.
"You can't do that," said Bert Livingston, a 20th Century Fox distribution executive. "What you do is you look up history, you come up with your best-guess scenario. The number is the number. Whatever it is, if it ends up being No. 1 or 5 or 6, we just estimate our numbers."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/11/date-night-in-box-office-_n_533376.html