The first Friday box office estimates are just beginning to come in, and according to the tracking website Boxofficeguru.com, in its second weekend Iron Man easily held off the debut of Speed Racer in the battle of "genre" films. In fact, Speed Racer only finished third in the Friday tally, behind the Cameron Diaz/Ashton Kutcher romantic comedy What Happens in Vegas.
Iron Man is estimated to have racked up another $15.3 million on Friday, a 56.6% drop from its opening Friday figure of $35.2m. While it's typical of superhero/comic book based movies to drop in upwards of 50% in their second weekends, if that percentage holds throughout the entire three-day sophomore frame, it may some something of a minor surprise/disappointment for Paramount/Marvel considering the overwhelmingly positive critical and word-of-mouth buzz the film has received.
The gold standard of superhero movie "legs" continues to be 2002's Spider-Man, which dropped only 38% in its second weekend.
As for Speed Racer - subject of much more mixed reception - it's estimated to have made $5.85 million on Friday, placing it below most industry predictions. To put it in some perspective, in its second Friday, Iron Man enjoyed a $3722.00 per screen average, whereas as Speed Racer averaged less than half of that at $1622.00
