A key ingredient to making a successful summer box office is having films that continue to bring in moviegoers weeks after opening. But this year, an alarming number of high-profile pictures have faltered after their launches helping to put the brakes on what is normally the most lucrative time of year. Recent movies like Nutty Professor II, Hollow Man, Coyote Ugly, and X-Men all suffered alarmingly high sophomore declines north of 50%. Expensive sci-fi films Battlefield Earth and Titan A.E. each lost over 60% of their audience on the second weekend. Holdover business is crucial to keeping attendance high but the lack of durable hits like The Sixth Sense, There's Something About Mary, or Forrest Gump has slowed box office momentum this summer.

The season's few standouts have included comedies like Chicken Run and Big Momma's House as well as dramatic action films like Gladiator, Space Cowboys, and What Lies Beneath. In fact, Gladiator opened in early May with $34.5M which was below the levels of last year's The Mummy and 1998's Deep Impact which launched at the same time. But because of better word-of-mouth, the Russell Crowe epic had stronger legs reaching $183M to date compared with $155M and $140M for the The Mummy and Deep Impact respectively. Overall, seeing second weekend declines of 45% or more has become increasingly common this summer as moviegoers support a film in the initial week but abandon ship thereafter, perhaps not recommending them to others.

The table below lists the opening weekend grosses and percentage declines for notable summer movies in their second, third, and fourth weekends of release. Also listed are their total grosses as of August 27, 2000. All weekend grosses are three-day (Friday-to-Sunday) figures.

Updated : August 30, 2000

Written by Gitesh Pandya