BOX OFFICE: Indiana Jones digs up box office gold while Narnia disappoints

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull has the biggest opening of the year thus far surpassing Iron Man's surprisingly strong debut of $98.6 million early this month, early estimates suggest. Studio executives were shooting for a $150 million+ Memorial Day weekend opening for Indy's 4th outing. Early estimates for the Friday-Sunday opening has Indy at over $101 million. Actual figures will be available Tuesday after the holiday.

Narnia isn't exactly in ruins but it sure isn't going to be a major domestic return for Disney. My predictions for this movie were right on. After a disappointing lower debut compared to the first installment, The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian returned $23 million for its second weekend. That's over a 50% drop!!! Disney already has the 3rd installment - The Voyage of the Dawn Threader - in the works and is slated to open early May 2010 . . . once again after Iron Man in, well, Iron Man 2.

Will Disney pull back on the production budget for the next film? Will it use a smarter marketing campaign to target its appropiate audience? The Disney execs better learn from the mistakes from this outing. Prince Caspian cost $200 million to make. Domestically, I think it will recover the production budget but will fall way short of the $291 million of the 1st film.

I don't think there'll be a 4th Narnia film.

Of note, all the major films that have opened thus far this month have had positive reviews but revenues are lagging behind last year's poorly reviewed crop of films.

-Andres