Box Office Returns - Weekend 6/12/09-6/14/09

Predicting the Opening Weekend Box Office is by no means easy but the wide variety of opinions of how a movie will do can lead to prices which can be taken advantage of.

When considering how good a movie can do, it is best to compare that movie to similar movies and see how they did. In the case of “The Taking of Pelham 1,2,3” we can compare this movie with previous Denzel Washington movies. All of these movies had around 3,000 theaters.

$20,018,620 - The Manchurian Candidate
$43,565,115 - American Gangster
$20,574,802 - Déjà vu
$22,751,490 - Man on Fire
$28,954,945 - Inside Man

John Travolta hasn’t been part of an action movie in a while but we do have some movies to compare for him.

$18,145,632 – Swordfish
$11,511,960 – Basic

Needless to say, John Travolta isn’t the star he used to be but I bet he can add a couple million to Pelham 1,2,3

The Taking of Pelham 1,2,3 is going against some fierce competition with “The Hangover” and the Pixar movie “Up” and both of these movies look like they could pass 30 Million again. Reviews for Pelham 1,2,3 have also been very mixed and they probably won’t do the movie any help with a 43% Rotten Score on Rotten Tomatoes and 55% on Metacritic.

Now, I’m betting that Pelham 1,2,3 could have done around 20-30 Million with just Denzel Washington. Add in John Travolta and 25 Million is looking like a pretty good floor. But 30 Million is not at all a sure thing and 35 Million is not looking good.

I was able to short the PELHAM.123.+$35.0M contract for 50 very early in the week and it surprisingly stayed around 40-50 for a while. Considering that tracking and most predictions out there have it around 30 or below, Under 35 Million seems pretty safe this week and the price has taken quite a tumble.



I haven’t done much research for “Imagine That” the Disney movie with Eddie Murphy but Tracking had it around 8 Million this week and most predictions have it in the low teens. Look for it to make around 12.5 Million but I haven’t gone either way with this movie because I think there is a lot of uncertainty with how it will do.