Weekend Box Office Update

Madagascar 3 taking the top spot this weekend wasn't necessarily a surprise, considering the PG rating and a screen count of 4,258 compared to Prometheus' 3,396 screens. The surprise was that Prometheus and Madagascar 3 were neck and neck on Friday.

With the R-rating and other summer movies still pulling in decent numbers, Fox was expecting Prometheus to open in the $30 - $40 million range, but it managed to outperform and earn $50 million. Midnight screenings totals were big and people kept turning up throughout the weekend, showing that an R-rated film can still do big business during the summer.

With Prometheus planned as the start of a new/rebooted franchise, what are the chances of a sequel happening? It all comes down to the numbers and we're going to compare Prometheus to other Fox genre films that recently had a sequel greenlit. With a production budget of $93 million, Rise of the Planet of the Apes opened domestically to $54.8 million and went on to earn $481 million worldwide. X-Men First Class had a production budget of $160 million, earned $55 million on its first weekend and brought in a worldwide total of $353 million.

Prometheus has already had quite a successful international run and is at $141 million worldwide. If it doesn't have a huge US drop over the next couple of weeks, it should have no problem getting into the $300 million territory. Fox will probably wait until seeing Blu-ray/DVD sales to make anything official, but when/if Prometheus crosses the $350 million mark, we say a sequel is likely.

Next weekend's big openings are Rock of Ages and That's My Boy. Here are the top 10 box office results for this weekend:

1. Madagascar 3 - $60,350,000
2. Prometheus - $50,000,000
3. Snow White and the Huntsman - $23,021,000
4. Men in Black 3 - $13,500,000
5. The Avengers - $10,809,000
6. The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel - $3,235,000
7. What to Expect When You’re Expecting - $2,710,000
8. Battleship - $2,286,000
9. The Dictator - $2,150,000
10. Moonrise Kingdom - $1,579,000