The Cinema Numbers Review For 7/19/10: Those Are "Inceptional" Numbers

Just $76 million. Still very good, but I thought it would do even more:

Warner Bros/Legendary Pictures' Inception generated an estimated $15.6M internationally with nearly 2.7M admissions from 1,753 screens in 7 markets. The studio plans a 3-week overseas roll-out for Chris Nolan's pic. This weekend, the UK delivered an outstanding £5.6M ($8.6M) from 451 situations nationwide, marking the biggest opening ever for a Leonardo Di Caprio film in that country.

I figured with how this is THEE summer blockbuster for this year (and I'm not even talking about the quality of the movie, just on its hype and how it was given that label by everyone) that it would garner at like $90 million first week. Nevertheless, with the Oscar recognition it will receive and all, Nolan, Di Caprio (since it's his biggest debut ever) and everyone else won't complain at all.

Which is a far far cry for nicolas Cage, Disney, and everyone else who had to take part of "The Sorcerer's Apprentice." Talk about deserving numbers for a mediocre cinema at best:

3. What a huge disappointment for Disney. Jerry Bruckheimer's Sorcerer's Apprentice tanked by making only $5.4M Friday and $6.9M Saturday from 3,504 U.S. and Canadian theaters for what should be a paltry $17.3M for the 3-day weekend. The studio even moved up its opening to Wednesday to garner extra attention but added only $3.7M Wednesday from 3,385 locations, and $3.2M Thursday. So the pic's cume is now $24.4M. Little wonder that Hollywood thinks this may well be the last film at Disney where megaproducer Bruckheimer just phones it in. The pic's 5-day projection kept going down, from $35M to $30M to $25M for the costly Nic Cage starrer. But I'd been following the pic's tracking, which at no point hinted at a blockbuster. At 2 1/2 weeks out, Sorcerer's Apprentice was tracking worse than Bruckheimer's U.S. underperformer Prince Of Persia did.

"Despicable Me" was sandwiched in between last Friday's debuts, pushing over $100 million to make the folks happy at Universal, who Deadline's Hollywood says has really needed to dough of late.

And the biggest drop of the weekend was definitely "Predator", which had a 73% drop from its opening week. That is a massive decline indeed.

Your Numbers report for "The Cinema" this week folks.