In an email to movie news site Deadline, Warner Bros says their rivals are combining their Tuesday box office sales with Wednesday’s midnight take. The movies in question are Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol and The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, and Warner Bros big movie at stake is the recently released Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows.
The message to Deadline stated:
MI4 opened wide on Tuesday at 5PM and included the entire day ($2M) into Wednesday’s gross of $8.5M. Tattoo opened wide at 7PM on Tuesday and included the entire day ($1.6M) into Wednewsday’s gross of $5M. Since this creative reporting has never be done before, you should note that both films grosses Wednesday night were intentionally inflated from $6.5M and $3.4M respectively
Deadline says this sounds like sour grapes: “Warner Bros is especially touchy because its sequel Sherlock Holmes: A Game Of Shadows was supposed to be the big Christmas-New Years movie and instead opened to disappointing domestic grosses last weekend.”
MI4 topped the box office ladder for Wednesday, collecting $6.6 million in addition to $2 million in Tuesday night shows for a total $8.6 million.
So far, Sherlock Holmes has grossed more than $39.6 million since it was released Dec. 16.
As of publication, Sony and Paramount have not replied to Warner Bros’s allegations.
In related news, Reuters writes Paramount is poised to capture the worldwide domestic box office crown from Warner Brothers in 2011. Also, “with $2.84 billion in foreign revenue and $4.6 billion in global receipts to date, Paramount will also end Warner’s international and worldwide No. 1 streaks,” Reuters adds.
They may not be able to retain that lead, though. “Their big hits have been with third-party content,” Marla Backer, an analyst at Hudson Square Research, told reporters. “I don’t think it’s clear they can maintain their position based on the in-house content that they produce.”
