Mousekingdom Blog

… I am not talking about the singer with the ever changing name (why should I say hail to him?) … I am talking about Prince Caspian, the second installment of the “Chronicle of Narnia” series of Walt Disney Pictures, which premiered in the US and selected international numbers before the weekend. The results? First spot in the movie charts on its opening weekend - but that is only part of the story …

Playing in 3,929 theaters the second part of the Narnia series managed to pull in $56.6 million on the US market on the three day opening weekend (Friday through Sunday) according to the Sunday estimates of the studios. While this was sufficient to grab the box office crown for the weekend it fell short of the $65 million debut of the first movie in the Narnia series.

Interestingly the movie made $19.3 million on Friday and despite being billed as family fare only managed a 5% bump on Saturday to take in another $20.3 million even though family fare usually does much better on Saturday thanks to the family / kids friendly matinee performances. It seems that the much darker tone of the second installment of the series scared off some families, even though the movie was rated PG. According to Deadline Hollywod Daily original estimates had expected about $80 million - a mark the movie clearly missed. But then this estimate seemd hugely overblown to begin with. Looking at other successful movie series aimed at the family market, such as the Harry Potter movies, the second movies usually opened lower and not higher than the first movie. So why should have Narnia be different? Especially considering that the book the movie is based on was already darker then the first book and first reviews heavily rode this point which might have scared families with younger kids away. Alex Stroup over on Mouseplanet even went to the length of questioning the rating of the movie pointing out that he thought that the movie had deliberately been made even darker than the book and would have been rated PG-13 if released in the same format by any studio other than Disney.

However it should not be forgotten that there is also an international market in which the movie fared rather well: it only opened in 12 countries outside the US so far (e.g. NOT including the big German market, where it will only premier in July in time for the summer school break). In these 12 countries outside the US the movie raked in $20.7 million according to Disney, which equals a 27% improvement compared to the first movie of the series. Based on these numbers there are still big things to expect from the movie. Also Disney expects the movie to play well with kids and families throughout the summer. CNN cites Mark Zoradi, president of the Walt Disney Studios Motion Picture Group, saying: “This is a film that we think is going to play all summer long and it’s got nothing but school holidays in front of it”. So hoppes are high at Disney the movie will be successful for them - however, it should not be forgotten that coming Thursday the highly anticipated fourth installment of the Indiana Jones series will open on the big screen…

But will studio bosses eye the bottom line of the second movie of the Narnia series, the creative minds are already in the middle of the pre-production work for the thrid movie (”The Chronicles of Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader”) set to open in summer 2010.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 19th, 2008 at 10:39 am and is filed under Disney Movies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.