User blog:Ceauntay/A VERY GOOD FRIDAY:

FRIDAY 11 PM, 2ND UPDATE: Studios tell me this Easter Weekend has begun with rain in 2/3s of the U.S. and the first huge "up" weekend (+40%) from last year at $130M. Twentieth Century Fox's Rio 3D may be about a bird, but Friday numbers show "it's holding like a rock," a studio exec just emailed me. Lionsgate's latest in Tyler Perry's franchise, Madea's Big Happy Family, looks soft. This is, after all, Perry's sixth cross-dressing film, but the last one opened to a $41M weekend and the one before to $30M. But overperforming is Fox's Water For Elephants based on Sara Gruen's best-selling book and written by Richard LaGravenese and directed by Francis Lawrence. Clearly, the classy ad campaign was intriguing for adults and Robert Pattinson's Twi-hards. "Terrific start for Elephants as we could hit higher teens," a Fox exec tells me. It's also a good day for Universal's holdover Hop from Illumination Entertainment after passing $100M. It'll pop on Saturday and Sunday for the little bunnies and their parents. And Disneynature's African Cats narrated by Samuel Jackson is also playing strong for a niche nature movie. So it's not a bad Good Friday in more ways than one! Refined numbers and full analysis in the AM: Here is the Top 10: 1. Rio 3D (Blue Sky Studio/Fox) Week 2 [3,842 Theaters] Friday $11.6M (+12%), Estimated Easter Weekend $82M 2. Madea's Big Happy Family (Tyler Perry/Lionsgate) NEW [2,288 Theaters] Friday $11M, Estimated Easter Weekend $26.5M 3. Water For Elephants (Fox 2000/Fox) NEW [2,817 Theaters] Friday $7M, Estimated Easter Weekend $18M

4. 'Scooby-Doo! The Movie' (Warner Bros./Hanna-Barbera) Friday $3.2M, Estimated Easter Weekend $10M, Estimated Cume $265m

5. Hop (Illumination Entertainment/Universal) Week 4 [3,616 Theaters] Friday $4.2M, Estimated Easter Weekend $10M, Estimated Cume $105M 6. African Cats (Disneynature/Walt Disney Studios) NEW [1,220 Theaters] Friday $3.2M, Estimated Easter Weekend $7.8M 7. Soul Surfer (FilmDistrict/Sony) Week 3 [2,240 Theaters]] Friday $2.3M, Estimated Easter Weekend $6.3M, Estimated Cume $29.5M 8. Scream 4 (Miramax/Dimension/Weinstein Co) Week 2 [3,314 Theaters] Friday $2.3M (-62%), Estimated Easter Weekend 6.5M, Estimated Cume $30.5M 9. Insidious (FilmDistrict) Week 4 [2,130 Theaters] Friday $2.1M, Estimated Easter Weekend $5.5M, Estimated Cume $44.3M 10. Source Code (Summit) Week 4 [2,363 Theaters] Friday $1.9M, Estimated Easter Weekend $5.5M, Estimated Cume $45M