God, I wish I could’ve made it out to see this one on opening day. I still haven’t made it out to see it and that makes little Jason cry…

For anyone who’s remotely interested, Clerks 2 managed to nab (according to BoxOfficeGuru.com) $10.1m it’s opening weekend. Normally, I’d call that a flop. Normally.

See, “normally” means that when studios earn less than $30m on a flick when they spent over $50m to make and another $10-$15m to market and promote, it tanks. Clerks 2, however, cost Kevin Smith and co. only $5m to make and probably less than $100k to promote. Which means that they earned twice that back in one weekend. I don’t know many movies made recently that can claim that.

When all is said and done, the bean-counters are expecting Clerks 2 to gross about $20m from it’s entire theatrical run. Again, not impressive, but that means that everything is covered and all the DVD sales (which, if previous Clerks and Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back figures are any indication, I’d figure about another $25-$30m) is all profit.

Not bad, for a flop.

And they did it my knowing their market and targeting them specifically. I think the rest of the movie industry could learn something from them. It’s definitly re-defined how I look at box-office openers.