In the year 2000, when the Fourth of July last fell on a Tuesday, the new releases The Perfect Storm and The Patriot both saw their Friday grosses represent only 23% of their entire Friday-to-Sunday grosses. With Monday being a day off for many, Sunday ticket sales were much higher than normal. This year, the box office should work in similar fashion.

After three days in theaters, Superman Returns is running 23% ahead of the $39.3M of Batman Begins, but 16% behind the $57.6M collected by War of the Worlds. The new Man of Steel adventure should find its way to $59-63M over the Friday-to-Sunday span whiile its five-day debut looks to climb to $91-95M. That would put the five-day opening of Superman below the $102.8M three-day bow of X-Men: The Last Stand from six weeks ago. Director Bryan Singer left the latter film to work on the former.

Opening on Friday with great strength was the Meryl Streep-Anne Hathaway comedy The Devil Wears Prada which collected an estimated $9.5M in its first day of release. The Fox title powered ahead of the $8.5M opening day of another femme-driven comedy, March's Failure to Launch, which went on to gross $24.4M over its initial weekend. Given the current holiday weekend, Prada might take in about $31-36M over the three-day span.

Among holdovers, Friday-to-Friday declines were 57% for Click, 37% for Cars, and 70% for Waist Deep.

For a review of Superman Returns visit The Chief Report.

Be sure to check back on Sunday for the complete weekend box office report featuring official studio estimates.