June 27, 1999

Big B.O. for Sandler's Daddy

Attention ladies: If your shiftless, carefree, slacker ex-boyfriend adopted a 5-year-old boy just to show you what a sensitive, mature big stud artichoke he could be, would you take him back? What if his new movie rang up a better first-weekend gross than any non-sequel comedy in the history of cinema?

Adam Sandler's Big Daddy extended the Saturday Night Live alum's streak of winners in a most impressive fashion, easily beating out the competition to claim the top spot at the box office over the weekend with an estimated haul of $41.2 million. Sandler's last movie, The Waterboy, notched a first-weekend take of $39.4 million

. Since May 1, only The Mummy and The Phantom Menace have managed to rank as the top-grossing movie in America for longer than one weekend, and Big Daddy continued the overall trend of one blockbuster opening making way for the next. It's a pattern that seems likely to hold true next weekend, when both Will Smith's Wild Wild West and the Paramount-produced TV spin-off South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut join the already crowded field.

Big Daddy would actually rank as history's top-opening comedy outright — no "non-sequel" strings attached — were it not for the $54 million opening-weekend haul amassed by Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me earlier this month. Playing bridesmaid to Sandler's big weekend was Disney's Tarzan, last weekend's champ, which nailed down approximately $23.5 million in ticket sales

It seems all but certain the King of the Apes won't challenge The Lion King's status as Disney's most profitable box office monarch ever, but Tarzan's substantial second-weekend take has the animated adventure well on its way to the coveted $100 million mark. Austin Powers, Mike Myers' shamelessly shagadelic superspy, lagged a bit further behind the Ape Man this weekend than last — The Spy Who Shagged Me claimed the No. 3 spot with an estimated gross of $18.5 million. After three weeks in theaters, the second film chronicling the escapades of the snaggletoothed '60s swinger has closed to within spitting distance of $150 million and appears likely to eventually push its total domestic gross past $200 million.

Rounding out the Top 5 — and finishing in a dead heat for fourth place — were The General's Daughter ($15.6 million) and The Phantom Menace ($14.6 million). George Lucas' Star Wars prequel again demonstrated impressive staying power, with its weekend ticket sales falling off slightly less than 25 percent in its sixth weekend in release and should leapfrog over Jurassic Park to become the fourth most profitable movie of all time by midweek. The earnings curve took a nosedive between fifth and sixth place, with the romantic comedy Notting Hill claiming the No. 6 spot with an estimated take of $5.1 million.

The Mummy finished seventh with a gross of approximately $2.1 million, followed by Instinct ($1.9 million). After opening exclusively in New York and Los Angeles June 18, Miramax's An Ideal Husband expanded to the nation's Top 20 markets and climbed into the box office Top 10 with an estimated second-weekend take of $1.1 million. That was just good enough to sneak past the spring holdover that refuses to die, Keanu Reeves' The Matrix, which took in approximately $1 million to finish 10th.

Back to news page ~ Back Home ~ SNL Images ~ Movie Images ~ Misc Images ~ Adam Wav files ~

All the Info you need to know about Adam ~ Adam Sandler Posties ~

Email me about this site anytime ~