Columbia's PG-13 rated comedy drama Riding in Cars with Boys opened in second place to a high octane ESTIMATED $10.8 million at 2,770 theaters ($3,899 per theater).
Directed by Penny Marshall, it stars Drew Barrymore.
"Drew's movies usually tend to hold," Sony Pictures Entertainment worldwide marketing & distribution president Jeff Blake said Sunday morning. "So we certainly hope that's the case here. We got very nice exit polls from women of all ages. We hope what's happened to her movies in the past happens here. Never Been Kissed opened April 9, 1999, to $11.8 million and did $55.4 million and Ever After opened July 31, 1998, to $8.5 million and did $65.6 million. So as the female audience, in particular, continues to sample the movie, hopefully we'll be able to hold in there."
Reflecting on the overall marketplace, Blake noted, "I think the question is, 'Why isn't the market in general higher? Or why aren't anybody's movies higher?' I certainly think we've got the biggest factor very close to home and that's the volume of product. If the market isn't going to expand, for whatever reason--and it's only expanding slightly, if at all--I don't think you can be opening three or four movies every week in September and October, which is what we've done for the last month and are going to continue to do for the next couple of weeks."
In fact, looking ahead to next year it seems that 2002 is already crammed with product on many weekends. "You've got to think about that," Blake said. "It's one thing to do it in the summer when the market continually expands. It seems [there is] almost no limit. But certainly that's not what's happening this fall, for whatever reasons. I think we've got a solid opening, given the marketplace. But you're going to need to find a way for there to be more to go around for everybody to be happy in opening three or four [movies] a week."
Asked about what insiders called the strong tracking on Cars that suggested it would open number one, Blake replied, "You never know though. Whenever you're dealing with adult females--we had our young female audience and they certainly did turn out--the tracking is always a little tricky because they're the most vulnerable to wait. It ended up pretty close and the young male audience [which went to see From Hell] tends to be more reliable. In a close race, you're always a little better off with the younger males."