The question of whether the new Hannah Montana movie would do better than Dragonball: Evolution has been answered with a definitive yes.  In fact, it turned into a blowout.

Dragonball: Evolution opened Friday with a non-existant $2.1 million, opening in 8th place after one day, and averaging $951 per screen (though, it would open at #6 based on how much money was made per screen).  If you say that each screen had an average of 6 showings of the movie, that averages down to about $158.50 per showing, or about 16 people in the theater every time it ran.

Just from a brief review of early movies, there is little consistency on whether Friday is the best or worst (or middle) day for weekend box office numbers, but at this point Dragonball is probably going to be looking at between a $5 million  and $8 million opening weekend – obviously a bigger bomb than even I was imagining it to be.

On the otherhand, Hannah Montana looks to open at #1, racking up $17.4 million on Friday, and looks to garner between $45 and $60 million in a huge surprise this weekend.  (though I”m not sure what this says about society in general).

Update: Also for some perspective, Speed Racer opened on Friday at $6.2 million, leading into an opening weekend of $18.6 million and an overall domestic haul of $43.9 million.  Now consider that Dragonball is making about 1/3 Speed Racer did on opening Friday…