‘The Hangover’ Crushes ‘Lost’, Debuts at #1 (updated)
Bradley Cooper, Zach Galifianakis, and Ed Helms
I can already hear Will Ferrell and Vince Vaughn’s phones ringing this morning, as Luke Wilson is likely calling to say “Are you really sure you don’t want to do Old School 2?” That’s because Todd Phillips’ The Hangover opened super huge at the box office on Friday.
How huge? $16.5-$17 million huge? Putting that in context, that’s in the same range as I Love You, Man and Role Models pulled in their entire weekends. And it’s considerably higher than the $10.5 million that Wedding Crashers grossed on the first day. A final weekend gross between $40-$50 million seems likely and depending on the weekend performance of Up, The Hangover might even open at number one.
And what about Will Ferrell and Danny McBride’s Saturday morning TV remake of Land of the Lost? That marketed-to-kids-but-not-really-a-kids-film opened with $7.2 million. That should translate into a $19-$21 million total that isn’t terrible but clearly not as much as Universal was hoping for.
With Up doing surprisingly strong business and Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian holding up well with families, it does appear that Lost was squeezed from both sides and didn’t have room for a middle ground movie. Maybe the movie should have been marketed to adults, as The Hangover was. Maybe they should have kept original (and more expensive) costar Jack Black rather than “trading down” for Danny McBride (don’t get us wrong, Danny. We love you. But you’re not a big star… yet).
With it’s clever “Memento-meets-Bachelor Party” storyline, The Hangover is sure to receive excellent word of mouth and likely long legs at the box office. Land of the Lost stands a chance to make up some of the gap if it plays well with families this weekend, but perhaps many families are sensing it really isn’t a kids film and staying away.
Much was made about The Hangover’s “lack of star power” and while I think that’s true to extent, I do think that costars Bradley Cooper and Ed Helms have a high degree of recognition thanks to their supporting roles on TV and in the case of Cooper movies like Wedding Crashers and He’s Just Not That Into You. That recognition and excellent marketing really made a difference for the movie at the box office. The future is bright for Zach Galifianakis who steals many scenes in The Hangover and of course Todd Phillips seems to have his mojo back after some troubling times on Borat and School for Scoundrels.
Weekend estimates will be out on Sunday, along with final box office numbers on Monday.
Bradley Cooper
Ed Helms
Sunday Update
Here are the weekend box office estimates. Final numbers will be released on Monday.
- Up $44,244,000 weekend, $137,316,000 total
- The Hangover $43,270,000 weekend
- Land of the Lost $19,524,000 weekend
- Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian $14,650,000 weekend, $127,341,000 total
- Star Trek $8,400,000 weekend, $222,802,000 total
Monday Update
Congrats to Todd Phillips and The Hangover for debuting at number one! The final numbers are in and it turns out the Sunday “hold” was unusually strong, so The Hangover and Up flip-flop on the chart. But, it must be noted, the Sunday numbers for Land of the Lost were worse than estimated.
- The Hangover $44.9 million weekend
- Up $44.1 million weekend
- Land of the Lost $18.8 million weekend
- Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian $14.6 weekend, $127.3 million total