Twitter Watch: 'Toy Story 3' Scores with Audiences

Saturday Evening Update: Toy Story 3 really met and then exceeded just about everyone's expectation on Friday with an estimated $41 million in sales. This led to a Twitter ratio of 1,574 from its 64,533 tweets last week which was pretty close to my predicted $35 million for Friday. Twitter clearly had this pegged for great things all week and it certainly did not disappoint. I had compared it to Alice in Wonderland and the comparison definitely was very valuable. As expected Toy Story had a slightly lower ratio thanks to a harder search string and appeal to even younger kids, but the marker Alice laid out was very helpful in gauging its potential. The film is on track to score $124 million for the weekend thanks to Father's Day which should make it the largest grossing animated movie opening of all time. Only fitting that the movie that started it all for Pixar should return and become its crowning achievement to date.

Jonah Hex never really got off the ground, as it started with a pretty ordinary $2 million on Friday for a twitter ratio of 3,124. My prediction of $3.5 million was actually way too high as the film officially became the biggest dud of Summer, perhaps even the year. Its ratio blew by Jennifer's Body and even Kick Ass, with only MacGruber's 3,674 being higher from those I compared it to. It was very clear that the film was going to fall flat, but this was still astonishingly low for the production which reportedly cost $60 million. It is on course for $5.5 million on the weekend. 

Check back tomorrow for a full preview of next week's openers: Knight & Day and Grown Ups. Follow @AlexBOXOFFICE on Twitter for additional updates. 

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