Americans Like "RV" More Than "United 93"

Welcome back to Weekends at TDI, your one-stop shop for confusing numbers, flashy graphics and vibrant colors! Did you know that The Delta Institute Newsblog has been doing the "Weekly Stock Report" (Previously known as "Stocks 7/52") for over 15 weeks? We're quite impressed that we've been able to commit to one item for so long. And did you know that we've kept our current format (fonts, color, background) for eight weeks straight? A.D.D., my foot!

This week, the stock market was a mixed bag, with the Dow ending up, and everyone else closing down. But that's okay, because no one lost or gained too much. Except for the NASDAQ... That's a notable point loss. But they still have over 2,000 points to go before we should really start worrying. Perhaps the high gas prices are keeping stock traders at bay. Naw, the market was probably before anyways.

(source: Yahoo! Finance)

And now, it's the box office battle that you've been wondering about all week. With the highly contested United 93 opening, how many Americans would go to see this highly emotional docu-drama? Well, dividing the total estimated weekend income by the average ticket price of $6.21, approximately 1,868,760 people went to see this film. Almost 1.9 million. The top movie this weekend, RV, had just over 2.4 million viewers. So all in all, it was a pretty poor performing box office. It would seem that to get any excitement at the box office would be an impossible mission. (Mission impossible? Hold on a second...)

(source: BoxOfficeMojo)

Next week at the Box Office, filmgoers can scare themselves silly with An American Haunting, a horror film that looks at a "true story" (" " are mine) about a family who was tormented and killed by a spirit. But since it stars Donald Sutherland, we'd hope that they would suspect him first. I mean, it's Donald Sutherland. Next, Americans have the option of going to see the environmentalist-friendly Hoot. But none of that matters, because television scribe J.J. Abrams makes his big-screen debut next weekend with Mission Impossible 3, starring all of Hollywood. (But stay sharp for a cameo by Greg Grunberg!)

And that does it for this week's edition of Weekends at TDI. If it were a weekend every day, you'd probably get this feature all the time. But in the downtime, we'd like to think that you'll check back to this site often throughout the week. And don't forget our sister blog, The Epsilon Institute! It's back in action, and I've started an occasional editorial column called "Provoked Thoughts". Have a great week, folks!