The box office favors Ricky Bobby, again

Welcome to the Weekend Recap, your once-a-week source for financial and box office information. In this weeks installment, we'll be taking a look at why the financial markets took notable losses for the week. And it's not just because of the London plot! Then, how did Oliver Stone's World Trade Center do at the box office this weekend? We give you the estimated gross for the weekend. Plus, did our mid-week box office predictions match reality? It's all inside this week's edition of the Weekend Recap.

The financial markets took quite the beating this week. At first investors were relieved when the Fed decided not to raise interest rates, leaving them at a high 5.25%. But jitters over the current war in the Middle-East, and the uncovered terror plot originating from the United Kingdom, put investors in a buying mood. Also occurring this week, there was a stronger than expected Retail Sales report for July and a weak showing from transportation and semiconductor stocks.

Due in part to the strong sales report, investors next week will keep a close on inflation data to help indicate whether or not the Fed will keep the interest rate paused at its September meeting or if it will resume hiking the rate. In the week to come, several retailers are expected to release reports on Tuesday, including Wal-Mart, Home Depot and Staples. Finally, we would like to introduce your brand-new Weekly Stock Report graphic. It's bolder, yet simpler. In our opinion, it's much easier to read than before, though it's still taking us some time to get used to the new look. (This is the fifth incarnation of the weekly stock report and the first to do away with the "floating boxes" that have become prevalent over the past months.)

(Source: Yahoo! Finance)

In a rather slow and unimpressive week at the box office, Will Ferrell's racing comedy Talladega Nights: The Legend of Ricky Bobby managed to speed into first place again, beating out leading favorites Step Up and World Trade Center. While the top three films definitely are the clear leaders of the pack this week, the gains are hardly anything to get excited about; the top three films grossed an estimated $63 million, combined. What happened to the summers when the leading film could make that much money all on it's own? What happened to all the fun, energizing films? Well, they've moved down the calendar to the holiday season, closer to all the award ceremonies. And as such, December has become the new July. So if you want to see a lot of high-quality films opening up at the same time, you'll have to wait a few months.

But you've had enough commentary from me! You just want to know how much the movies grossed over the weekend. Well, we've got quite the treat for you. As part of the Weekend department's graphic overhaul, we built a brand new box office scoreboard from the ground up. It's wider, cleaner and easier to read. And now, all new releases are in tan, while all previously-released films are in a light blue. The art department nerds hope you enjoy this new look, because they say that there is no chance whatsoever than we can go back to the "floating boxes" format again. (Thanks alot for ruining the graphics archives, Phillip.)

(Source: BoxOfficeMojo)

In the third and final act of the Weekend Update, we revisit the box office predictions we made this past Wednesday and see if they match up with fact or if they're the closest thing to fiction that you'll ever find.
We Said: 1. Talladega Nights: The Legend of Ricky Bobby, $30-35 million.
Fact: 1. Talladega Nights: The Legend of Ricky Bobby, $23.0 million.
We Said: 2. Step Up, $25-30 million.
Fact: Step Up, $21.0 million.
We Said 3. World Trade Center, $20-25 million.
Fact: World Trade Center, $19.0 million.
We Said: 4. Pirates 2, $20-$25 million.
Fact: Barnyard, $10.1 million.
We Said: 5. Zoom, $15-$20 million.
Fact: Pulse, $8.5 million.

Conclusion: While we got 3 out of the top five films in their correct spots, we were completely off on the money front. In fact, we were anywhere between $28.4 to $53.4 million dollars short! So while we may have an adequate knowledge of what films will be popular, we need to take some correspondent's classes on how much a film is estimated to make. With only 3/10's of the predictions being accurate, we're going to have to say that our predictions were a nice, fanciful work of fiction.

And that's going to do it for the recap this weekend. I hope you enjoyed it at the very least as much as I did. And I hope you like the brand new look at the graphics department gave the recap! The box office scoreboard looks dramatically better and the weekly stock report is a lot more readable. All in all, I think the new look is a step forward for this segment. In other good news, the graphics department promises that the mid-week feature, the weekend preview, will have a separate color scheme and slightly different look to differentiate itself from the recap. That will be very useful when trying to determine if this site has actually been updated recently or not.

So until the next update, that's going to do it for your host, Charles Jurries. Please come back soon for more stocks and movies, and remember: friends don't let friends vote for rappin' grannies.