The Bourne Ultimatum, the third installment in the series starring Matt Damon, broke a slew of records this weekend with its $70 million+ opening. It’s not only the best Bourne opening yet — it’s the best August opening weekend of all time. But even a hands-down victory is susceptible to multiple spins.
At some point, someone positioned the Bourne franchise as a direct competitor to the James Bond franchise. And so, Variety’s weekend post mortem opens by noting the new spy’s dominance: “[F]ilmmaker Paul Greengrass’ The Bourne Ultimatum nabbed the best August opening on record, outperforming the debut of any James Bond pic as well as the previous two installments in Universal’s Jason Bourne spy.” The Greengrass shout-out is, I think, also significant: when was the last time a Bond film was associated with its director? The implication is that the Bourne franchise–which was handed to Greengrass after the studio determined Bourne Identity director Doug Liman (who secured the rights to the Robert Ludlum novels, wrote the Identity script and actually operated the camera for a portion of the first film) was too difficult to work with — is succeeding in part because of the auteur vision behind it.
Ever bottom-line minded, Brandon Gray at Box Office Mojo notes that this third Bourne *needed* to open huge. “The Bourne Ultimatum’s production budget bulked up to well over $100 million, compared to $75 million for Supremacy and $60 million for Identity.” Blockbusters generally need to gross twice their acknowledged production budgets, in order to cover marketing and distribution costs before turning a profit. Nikki Finke thinks it may face tough competition from Rush Hour 3 next week (yes, seriously), but BOM’s outlook on that score is pro-Bourne. Gray notes that exit polls on Ultimatum had viewers rating the pic extremely high, which suggests that it’s got strong holdover potential in the weeks to come.
Last weekend’s winners showed a market lack of that holdover potential in this frame. The Simpsons Movie dropped an astounding 74 percent from Friday-to-Friday, and 65 percent for the weekend as a whole; it still ended up in second place, but only because the competition was equally weak. The Andy Samberg misfire Hot Rod opened in ninth place, with about $5 million on 2,600 screens; the BRATZ movie couldn’t even manage that. The biggest indie showing of the week came from El Cantante, which debuted in 12th place with $3.2 million on about 540 screens; indie holdovers such as Rescue Dawn and Sicko are falling fast, with the latter about to drop out of the Top 20.
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