Sony's Marvel Comics-based Ghost Rider film starring Nicholas Cage accelerated to the top spot in the President's Day weekend box office derby with a three-day total estimated at $44.5 million.  Ghost Rider's weekend showing (adjusted for ticket price inflation) matches almost exactly that of director Mark Steven Johnson's previous Marvel comics adaptation Daredevil, which starred Ben Affleck and debuted over the President's Day weekend in 2003 earning just over $40 million in its first three days.  Daredevil, which cost an estimated $78 million to make, went on to earn $102 million domestically, which means that it earned roughly 40% of its total take during its opening weekend.

Now that the crimson cyclist's opening has surpassed most industry analysts' expectations, the question becomes 'Will Ghost Rider Flame Out?'  The studios have done an increasingly effective job of getting a film's core audience to show up for the opening weekend (when the studio's percentage of the box office take is at its highest point), so what percentage of Ghost Rider's final domestic total has it already earned during its opening weekend? 

The majority of the critics gave Daredevil a 'thumbs down' -- not that critical acclaim can sink comic book film--but the highest-grossing films in the genre such as the Spider-Man series and Batman Begins, have received good notices.  Perhaps stung by the treatment that Johnson's previous Marvel vehicles Daredevil and Electra suffered at the hand of movie reviewers, Sony did not allow critics to preview Ghost Rider (see 'Sony Stiffs Scribes'), so it should be interesting to see what kind of notices it will receive and how the film performs at the box office in the next few weeks.  With production costs estimated between $110 and $120 million, Sony is clearly hoping that Ghost Rider will surpass Daredevil's total take.

This weekend's second-ranking film was Disney's Bridge to Terabithia, which is based on best-selling YA novel.  What is perhaps most interesting about this movie is that it has been marketed as a fantasy film in spite of the fact that the film spends precious little time in the fantasy world of Terabithia compared with amount devoted to delineating the real world problems of its middle school protagonists.  The fact that Disney is playing up the fantasy elements of the film to such a degree and the fact that the 'star-free' movie earned over $22 million over the 3-day weekend both testify to the box office muscle of the fantasy genre.