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Box Office Guru Estimates:

1. Dragon 15M
2. Losers 14M
3. Back Up Plan 13M
4. Date Night 11M
5. Kick Ass 10M

Lee's Estimates:

1. Dragon 15.5 M
2. Back Up Plan 14.6 M
3. Losers 11.4 M
4. Date Night 11 M
5. Kick Ass 10.9

Shryke's Estimates:

1. The Losers - $20 million
2. How to Train Your Dragon - $14 million
3. The Back-Up Plan - $13 million
4. Kick-Ass - $12 million
5. Date Night - $11 million

Looks like a slow weekend, no matter how you cut it.

yup, two slow weekend's and then summer begins with a bang

Isn't good word-of-mouth doing anything for Kick-Ass??

Kick-Ass will probably drop 55-60%. It kind of reminds me of how Grindhouse had good word-of-mouth but had a disappointing opening followed by a 63% second weekend drop.

Grindhouse was a hit here in Austin. And Kick-Ass is selling out all over town. What's wrong with the rest of the country??

Most places in the US don't show the same amount of enthusiasm for B-movies and arthouse titles as they do in Austin.

It probably also helps that Grindhouse was filmed in Austin, so of course that was going to do well there.

True enough. It's just aggravating because it seems like every time there's a movie I really want to get behind, it bombs at the box-office--despite a positive critical reception and good word-of-mouth.

The studios don't like to get behind originality or challenge viewers. For every "Grindhouse/Kick-Ass/Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow", there's at least ten "Blades Of Glory/Why Did I Get Married Too/The Back-Up Plan/The Forgotten"'s that the studios would rather promote and market to the average filmgoer.

Same thing with foreign films and why you have never seen US releases of Taxi (Fox bought the remake rights and won't allow a release of the original), Il Mare (Warner Bros. bought the remake rights and did The Lake House while Il Mare remains obscure), Welcome To The Sticks (Will Smith bought the remake rights), My Sassy Girl (an in-name-only remake was done independently and most likely blocked offers for the original) or any of The Magic Roundabout or Asterix movies (Harvey Weinstein won't release them in their original versions).

You're mostly right, but I thought Kick-Ass had adequate advertising. I place the blame squarely on the audience (or lack thereof) for this one.

I think the ads focused too much on Hit-Girl. Moral guardians complained way too much about this and it was most likely negative publicity in the end. Maybe had the movie been called Kick-Ass and Hit-Girl....

Also, the first thing that people that people probably think of when they see Ass in the title is Johnny Knoxville and Steve-O doing stunts that shouldn't be imitated by your dumb little friends.

I don't think that's it. What "moral guardian" is going to want their kid to see an R rated film anyways?

The same ones that contradict themselves and take their kids to see Rambo and Watchmen (yes, people took their kids to watch these movies).

i'm pretty sure that these people that took their kids to watch those movies took them to see this one.

I was thinking the same thing. If you take your kid to an R rated film, you expect cussing, sex, and violence.

Somebody mentioned this somewhere already, but I bet a LOT of ticket sales went to other movies while the teens themselves were, in fact, watching Kick-Ass instead.