Fox officials are still poking around in the darkness when it comes to gauging the opening for their Tom Cruise film "Knight and Day."
On Wednesday, the film grossed $3.8 million at 3,041 theaters in U.S. and Canada. That performance would seem to confirm tracking feedback that suggests the "Knight and Day" won't be a big hit … but it still doesn't necessarily manifest the notion that the $107 million James Mangold-directed movie will be an absolute bomb, either.
Certainly, with industry buzz widely smacking the film's marketing campaign as convoluted, $3.8 mil doesn't compare nicely to other summer-Wednesday debuts in recent years, with Universlal's R-rated "Public Enemies" getting off to an $8.2 million start on July 1, 2009, and Paramount-DreamWorks' "Tropic Thunder" coming out to $6.5 milion on Aug. 13, 2008.
Hoping to at least crack the $20 million mark, Fox officials are trying to remain sanguine, noting that they've had solid sneak preview reactions, as well as good reviews from hard-to-please critics like the L.A. Times' Kenneth Turan.
"We haven't even seen a CinemaScore yet," said one studio official. "We still don't know."
