Weekend Box Office (August 1 - 3, 1997)

THIS WEEKEND Harrison Ford dominated the box office for a second weekend as Air Force One maintained its high altitude with a $25.7M weekend bringing its ten-day total to $80.7M. Off about 31% from its debut weekend, the Sony actioner remained on top despite a mighty splash by New Line's Spawn. With a $21.2M weekend (including $1.5M in Thursday night sneaks), Spawn landed in theaters with the third best August opening ever behind Harrison Ford's 1993 release The Fugitive ($23.8M) and New Line's own Mortal Kombat which opened with $23.3M in 1995. Spawn's mighty opening is great news to New Line Cinema which has only one other hit in 1997 to its credit - Austin Powers. The weekend gross for Spawn was stronger than my $15M projection while Air Force One was right on my radar and came within a hair of the $26M that I predicted.

Picture PerfectThree other new releases had more modest openings. The Jennifer Aniston comedy Picture Perfect had an ok opening with $7.8M landing it in fifth place. It should find its way to an eventual gross of about $25M - not superb, but still decent for her first starring role. Disney's Air Bud opened with $4.7M while the urban drama 187 starring Samuel L. Jackson was a victim of homicide as its corpse was nowhere to be found in the top ten. Picture Perfect and Air Bud posted debuts that were very close to my projections of $7M and $4M respectively. 187's opening of $2.1M was less than my pessimistic $5M forecast. For reviews of Picture Perfect and Spawn visit Sujit Chawla's Movie Review Page.



Elsewhere in the top ten, most holdovers performed well dropping between 32-36% each from last weekend showing that the market is expanding to accommodate good late-summer product. However, Good Burger lost half the business from the supersized opening it had last weekend. Men in Black raced across the $200M mark while Face/Off crossed $100M.


Overall, the top ten films grossed a hefty $94.4M - up 51% from last year and up 29% from 1995. Below are final studio figures. Click on the title to jump to its official home page.


# Title Aug 1 - 3 Jul 25 - 27 % Chg. Weeks Cumulative
1 Air Force One $ 25,731,622 $ 37,132,505 -30.7 2 $ 80,738,833
2 Spawn 21,210,131 1 21,210,131
3 George of the Jungle 8,876,982 13,196,237 -32.7 3 64,328,277
4 Men in Black 8,011,097 12,350,884 -35.1 5 208,122,305
5 Picture Perfect 7,809,026 1 7,809,026
6 Contact 6,249,420 9,704,949 -35.6 4 75,642,069
7 Air Bud 4,720,516 1 4,720,516
8 Nothing to Lose 4,492,096 6,917,279 -35.1 3 32,220,165
9 Face/Off 3,753,825 5,603,028 -33.0 6 102,028,771
10 Good Burger 3,568,411 7,058,333 -49.4 2 14,116,529
Top 5 $ 71,638,858 $ 79,442,908 -9.8
Top 10 94,423,126 101,320,619 -6.8

    This column is updated three times a week : Thursday (upcoming weekend's summary), Sunday (post-weekend analysis with estimates), and Monday night (actuals). Source : Variety, EDI.

    Last Updated : August 4, 1997 at 7:20PM