Film ON AIR

Apparently Paramount was just downplaying their box office star when they said they were expecting ‘Iron Man’ man to do $60-$70 million. Sure, you don’t want people to point and laugh at you when your blockbuster makes $50 million less than you expected, but sources now say ‘Iron Man’ is currently out-tracking last summers’ ‘Transformers.’

While the ‘Total Awareness’ was bigger for ‘Transformers,’ the Robert Downey Jr. vehicle has a better ‘Definite Interest number’ (51%-46%) and a better ‘First Choice score’ (29%-23%). With an $8 million preview on Thursday, a $38 opening Friday, and respectively $37 million and $28 million for Saturday and Sunday, this will make for a $111 million opening weekend. And it will put the movie in the top 10 of best openings and the second place for a non-sequel opening.

Personally, I think it won’t do more than $100 million in its opening weekend, but I’m not sure how much hype there is for this movie in the US. You could consider the lack of big movies the last weeks, which would make for a hungry public. But with all the upcoming box office monsters and GTA IV just getting into the households, the public might not be that hungry after all.