The big story early in the week was the tremendous financial success of the Friday the 13th remake.  The story not being told is how poorly the film is sustaining that early success.  If the early week trends hold through the weekend, the 2009 version of Friday the 13th will have one of the larger week 2 declines in recent memory.

Tracking the Friday the 13th numbers by day, it really becomes clear:
Friday - $19.3 million
Saturday - $14.3 million
Sunday - $7 million
Monday - $3 million (President’s Day Holiday)
Tuesday - $1.4 million
Wednesday - $1.1 million

Using Box Office Mojo, I reviewed the box office of the hundred highest opening days.  Of those hundred films, there is only one film that showed that type of weakness so early in its run is…. High School Musical 3.  In fact, if this trend holds, we can expect Friday the 13th to be off by better than 65% this weekend versus last.  One other thing,the only film that had a larger opening weekend to Friday the 13th, and failed to cross the $100 milion mark is…High School Musical 3.

High School Musical 3 box office for first five days (don’t forget to account for Friday the 13th having that Monday holiday):
Friday - $17 million
Saturday - $15.3 million
Sunday - $9.8 million
Monday - $1.5 million
Tuesday - $1.2 million
Wednesday - $1 million

Another potential milestone would be the 72.7% dropoff from opening weekend to the second weekend for “Doom”.  That represents the largest dropoff for a release of over 3,000 theaters.  This is an outside shot, there are probably enough genre fans willing to see the flick for a second time to keep the dropoff around 65%.

Of course, none of these numbers make Friday the 13th a failure.  No matter what happens, it is already a huge success and guarantees a sequel.  People ran out to see the film in its opening weekend because it carries a familiar name that genre fans love and casual moviegoers are familiar with.  When you see these type of numbers, you have to start wondering if the name and trailer have become more important to the process than the film itself, though.