What can I expect from the big May opening weekend?

Note: this article was written in 2012. The tables have been updated to include more recent box office information, but these changes have not been reflected in the text.

These days, the first weekend in May marks the start of the summer movie season.  It wasn't always like this. In the early 1990s, the part of May before the Memorial Day weekend was a box office dead zone.  However, Twister's 1996 debut with a then-eye-popping but these-days-expected $40 million opening weekend caused everyone to take another look

In subsequent years, the first weekend in May attracted increasingly higher-profile movies and in 2002 the first Spider-Man opened in this slot and shocked everyone by easily posting the first ever opening weekend over $100 million.  With The Avengers posting the first ever $200 million opening weekend in the same slot in 2012, the high profile beginning of May release isn't going away any time soon.

This column will look at the movies that have been released on the first May weekend over the last fifteen years by genre, highlighting their per screen average gross and their internal and delist multipliers.  It will also look at some movies that have been released as counter-programming .  But not in great detail because really, who cares?

Here are the high-profile movies released over that weekend:

Movie	Release Date	Midnight Box Office ($M)	Friday Box Office ($M)	Opening Weekend ($M)	Per Screen Average	Internal Multiplier	Internal Multiplier (adjusted for midnight box office)	Delist Multiplier
Deep Impact	08/05/1998	0.00	13.6	41.2	$13,039	3.02	3.02	2.72
Mummy	07/05/1999	0.00	14.5	43.4	$13,511	3.00	3.00	2.70
Gladiator	05/05/2000	0.00	11.1	34.8	$14,520	3.13	3.13	3.65
Mummy 2 - Returns	04/05/2001	0.00	23.4	68.1	$20,035	2.91	2.91	2.51
Spider-Man 1	03/05/2002	7.00	39.4	114.8	$31,769	2.91	3.33	2.91
X-Men 2 - X-2	02/05/2003	0.00	31.2	85.6	$22,871	2.74	2.74	2.25
Van Helsing	07/05/2004	0.00	19.5	51.7	$14,475	2.65	2.65	2.14
Kingdom of Heaven	06/05/2005	0.00	7.1	19.6	$6,106	2.75	2.75	2.29
Mission Impossible 3	05/05/2006	1.10	16.6	47.7	$11,777	2.87	3.00	2.43
Spider-Man 3	04/05/2007	10.00	59.8	151.1	$37,554	2.53	2.83	2.04
Iron Man 1	02/05/2008	5.00	35.2	98.6	$24,024	2.80	3.10	2.58
Wolverine	01/05/2009	5.00	34.4	85.1	$20,751	2.47	2.72	1.94
Iron Man 2	07/05/2010	7.50	51.2	128.1	$29,252	2.50	2.76	2.18
Thor	06/05/2011	3.25	25.5	65.7	$16,618	2.58	2.81	2.47
Avengers (Marvel)	04/05/2012	18.70	80.8	207.4	$47,698	2.57	3.04	2.53
Iron Man 3	03/05/2013	15.6	68.9	174.1	$40,946	2.53	3.27	2.14
Amazing Spider-Man 2	02/25/2014	8.7	35.2	91.6	$21,186	2.60	3.46	2.04

The last six weekends have all hosted movies about Marvel superheroes, and that will continue in 2013 with Iron Man 3, the next Spider-Man movie in 2014 and the Avengers sequel in 2015.

One other thing to note is there have been remarkably few disappointments on this weekend.  Eight of the fifteen movies have a per screen average of over $20,000.  Kingdom of Heaven  really stands out as the disaster of the bunch as the only one with a per screen average of under $10,000, though there have been others like Mission: Impossible 3 that did not live up to expectations.  Studios do not want to begin the summer with a dud, so they are choosing the movies in which they have the most confidence in to open on this weekend.

With the growing trend towards midnight and pre-midnight screenings.  I'm very cautious about inferring a straight-line relationship between a movie's midnight box office and its opening weekend, especially as midnight screenings have become so much more common in recent years.  However, it seems that the bigger the midnight grosses, the bigger the opening weekend.  Here's a graph looking at the last seven blockbusters to open on this weekend that shows the relationship.

That's a pretty close fit, from Mission: Impossible 3 on the bottom left to The Avengers up on the top right.  The R² is a very strong at 0.96, indicating a closely linked relationship.  This makes sense on one level, because most of these films are aimed at the same audience and are therefore comparable, but it also doesn't make any sense, because we would expect the movies with the highest midnight box office to also be the most front-loaded.  Of course, there are only seven data points on the chart.

Going back to the table, the average internal multiplier of the group is 2.76, or 2.92 when adjusted for midnight box office, though over the last five years the average IM is marginally lower - 2.58 unadjusted and 2.88 adjusted.  The highest IMs (adjusted for midnights) were achieved by Spider-Man, Gladiator, Iron Man and The Avengers, which all had critical and audience success.  The lowest adjusted IMs were for Van Helsing and Wolverine, which were relative disappointments to critics and audiences alike.

Movies that adjust on the first weekend on May also get a bonus because they delist after the Memorial Day weekend, gaining an extra day of box office.  But does this extra day mean these movies will have a strong delist multiplier?

Not really.  Gladiator delisted well above its adjust price, and Spider-Man made the cut by the thinnest of margins.  Every other movie delisted below their adjust price.

The average delist multiplier of high-profile movies released on this weekend is only 2.49, so these movies are delisting about 7.5% below their adjust price.  The average delist multiplier of the last five movies is even lower - a mere 2.34, or 13% below the adjust.

Just for completeness, here are the other movies that have opened on weekends in the hope of attracting people who have no interest in comic book movies:

Movie	Release Date	Opening Weekend ($M)	Per Screen Average	Internal Multiplier	Delist Multiplier
Lizzie McGuire	02/05/2003	17.3	$6,138	3.04	2.17
New York Minute	07/05/2004	6.0	$1,983	2.73	2.26
Crash	06/05/2005	9.1	$4,886	3.23	3.97
House of Wax	06/05/2005	12.1	$3,882	2.49	2.47
Made of Honor	02/05/2008	14.8	$5,407	2.66	2.70
Ghosts  of Girlfriends Past	01/05/2009	15.4	$4,854	2.65	3.04
Battle for Terra	01/05/2009	1.1	$934	4.28	1.49
Something Borrowed	06/05/2011	13.9	$4,802	2.91	2.52
Jumping the Broom	06/05/2011	15.2	$7,477	3.66	2.28

A decade ago, the counter-programming was tween movies, then it shifted to more romantic comedies aimed at women over 25.  The rom-coms have all performed respectably, with OWs in the $13-$15M range.  Jumping the Broom, the only one of the bunch aimed at African-Americans, had the highest internal multiplier (Sunday was its biggest day of the weekend), but the lowest delist multiplier.  Only Ghosts of Girlfriends Past  delisted above its adjust price.

So, the summary:

• the first weekend in May usually has a high-profile blockbuster that the studio is confident will open well and have at least some four-quadrant appeal
• we have a very small data set, but it looks as though we can reasonably infer a movie's opening weekend from its midnight box office
• we can expect an IM in the range of 2.8 to 3 when midnights are factored out.  Movies that audiences like/are well-received by critics and/or audiences will probably have an IM at the high end of the range, while movies that aren't as good will be at the low end
• blockbusters released on this weekend will probably not delist above their adjust price, despite the extra day of box office they get from the Memorial Day weekend.  Expect a delist multiplier no greater than 2.5
• there is room for other movies to open on this weekend, but the box office potential for the weekend caps out around the $15 million mark.