Box Office: His Grosses Are Real, But He Is Not
July 1 -- Another Steven Spielberg movie, another top-grossing blockbuster: Ho-hum.
The man responsible for such landmark hits as Jaws, E.T., and Raiders of the Lost Ark hasn't had a movie in theaters since 1998's Saving Private Ryan, but if the weekend box-office estimates are any kind of yardstick, moviegoers haven't forgotten his name quite yet. Studio figures released earlier today have Spielberg's A.I.: Artificial Intelligence on track to rack up slightly more than $30 million, placing it a cool $10 million ahead of its nearest competitor.
The sci-fi drama about a robotic lad's quest to become a real boy, a project Spielberg wrote and directed after developing its story for several years with the late Stanley Kubrick, debuted in 3,242 venues and claimed approximately $9,300 per site. The numbers aren't staggering, but they stack up reasonably well alongside the debut of Ryan — the World War II drama took in $30.5 million on 779 fewer screens — which posted an eventual gross of $216 million.
Playing second fiddle to A.I.'s Haley Joel Osment and Jude Law were Vin Diesel and Paul Walker, stars of The Fast and the Furious. After blowing the doors off of theaters nationwide with a shockingly strong $40 million opening, Furious saw its earnings cut in half, finishing weekend two with estimated Friday-Sunday ticket sales of $20 million. That falls right in line with the summer-long trend of huge openings followed by sharp second-weekend declines.
The third place finisher, Eddie Murphy's Dr. Dolittle 2, bucked the trend by following up its $25 million debut with a second-weekend haul of approximately $15.4 million, dropping just 38 percent. But Paramount's Tomb Raider, despite passing the $100 million mark, continued to sink like a stone, dropping another 50 percent one weekend after falling 58 percent from its record-setting $47.7 million opening. With just $9.8 million this weekend, Raider's fast fade almost certainly has Paramount casting hopeful eyes on Robert De Niro's The Score.
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