I don’t think even the biggest doubters of the live-actin Dragonball: Evolution could have imagined that this movie would have bombed so much.  After 3 days, Dragonball: Evolution opened at #8 with an estimated $4.65 million.  One should note that these estimates are often revised downwards as well (Speed Racer’s actual opening weekend total was nearly 10% less than the initial estimate), so in a worst case scenario, the actuals could put it under even $4 million.

Given that Dragonball screened on 2,181 theaters and that average ticket prices are $7.18, that means a total of about 647,500 people saw this movie, averaging to about 300 people per theater, or 100 people per theater per day (and then spread that out to 5 to 7 shows per day per theater, assuming it was only on 1 screen per theater, it’s looking at something around 15 to 20 people per screen per showing.).  While Speed Racer was seen as a bomb as well, it still garnered 249 people per theater per day, even though it was shown in over 1000 more theaters.  Box Office Mojo rates it as the 84th worst opening for a movie that opened in over 2000 theaters.

This also continues a string of flops for Fox, whose last films have opened to bad performances, with 12 Rounds opening to just $5.3 million and Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li opening at $4.7 million (in 1,136 theaters, meaning that, on average, it actually did better than Dragonball), and the studio only has 2 films in the top 30 this year so far.

Weekend actuals are expected to be released sometime this afternoon.