'Cloverfield' Eats Up $18 Mil at the Friday Box-Office

‘Cloverfield’ Eats Up $18 Mil at the Friday Box-Office

January 19, 2008

By Brad Brevet

I can’t remember where I saw it, but one box-office prognosticator queried whether boyfriends would ask their girlfriends to go to the buzzy monster movie Cloverfield this weekend and risk not getting laid, or take them to the more sexually promising chick flick 27 Dresses. It looks like the results on that question are in as Cloverfield dominates the Friday box with an estimated $18.25 million, besting second place 27 Dresses‘s $8.65 million.

The other battle was said to be between Heigl’s Dresses and the Diane Keaton, Queen Latifah and Katie Holmes feature Mad Money, and it seems the “Grey’s Anatomy” star was up for that challenge as the power of Xenu was not with Mrs. Cruise-Holmes as Mad Money only managed $2.25 million on Friday coming in at the sixth position.

The top five was rounded out with The Bucket List at #3 with $4.08 million, Juno in the four spot with $3.03 million and First Sunday coming in at #5 with an estimated $2.33 million.

One film folks had their eyes on was the expanded There Will be Blood. Blood expanded to a mere 389 theaters this weekend and managed an impressive $1,959 average per theater with an estimated $762,000 on Friday. Unfortunately this means the film will most likely fall short of the top ten for the weekend, but it was the third best per-theater-average for Friday and should remain as such through the weekend.

Now, Fantasy Moguls is estimating out the four-day weekend thanks to the Martin Luther King holiday and believes Cloverfield will top $52 million for the weekend, a figure that depends on word of mouth after the film’s opening frame. Will folks urge their friends to go see the monster flick, or will complaints of shaky cam and a gimmicky film over rule? After 2,600 votes at IMDb Cloverfield has an 8.3/10 rating and it currently sits at RottenTomatoes with a 77% rating from critics. Unfortunately RT’s new design layout doesn’t allow me to see if the majority of the high ratings are from online critics or split among the daily papers and online.

The RopeofSilicon Box-Office Oracle may have judged the film a little too high, anticipating $49.6 million after only three days, but it appears Cloverfield will be the clear cut weekend winner.

Here are the rest of Fantasy Mogul’s 4-day weekend estimates. Laremy will be back on Sunday to wrap-up the three-day weekend for yah.