Will "Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith" have legs?

My wife took the boys to see the latest Star Wars movie at the 7:10 pm showing on Friday night, its ninth day in release. She said the theatre was almost empty and the few viewers sat there like lumps. Watching it was much more depressing than the first time she saw it in a theatre jammed with excited fanboys who cheered each character's introduction.

The studio's "estimate" is that Friday's box office was down 54% compared to the first Friday, and that at $15.5 million for the day, it slightly trailed the uninspiring-sounding remake of "The Longest Yard" with Adam Sandler pretending to be Burt Reynolds. A drop of 54% is bad, but not as disastrous as, say, "The Hulk," which dropped about 60% from the first to second weekends. In contrast, "The Passion of the Christ," after a big debut tended to drop only about 3/8ths of its business each weekend, so it had good legs.

Obviously, "Sith" is going to make a boatload of money, but it will be interesting to see if it pays a price for Lucas's dreary filmmaking.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer