"It goes without saying that Battlefield Earth will fall off the face of the earth. John Travolta might not even notice since after the disastrous opening weekend he's probably been holed up deep in the recesses of the Scientology Celebrity Center getting "audited" up the wazoo. Expect the $73-million bellyflop to manage just around $5 million this weekend.

5/16 Weekend Box Office

Gladiator threw the Scientologists to the lions, as its second weekend haul of $24.6 million more than doubled the opening of the universally reviled Battlefield Earth ...

Few were interested in seeing a cackling John Travolta prancing about in dreadlocks and an enormous codpiece as his $73 million pet project Battlefield Earth mustered just $11.5 million from 3,307 theaters, the fifth widest release of all time. What will this do to his "tone scale"? Perhaps some intensive "auditing" at the Celebrity Center is now in store for him to get all of his "thetans" in order.

My God, what does one say about Battlefield Earth that hasn't been said already? The ad campaign declares that "John Travolta is the new face of evil." Hey, they said it. Not me. "The summer movie season starts off with a bang." Yeah, from the sound of this megaton bomb exploding.

Distributor Warner Bros. won't be losing that much money though. They just paid for the prints and advertising and are getting first dollar until they recoup their costs. Franchise Pictures, who foot the hefty production bill, will be the one hurting though, as the picture will peter out quickly, drowning them in red ink. They should have known better. No way in hell was this thing ever going to make money."

And those predictions in full for this weekend:

1 Dinosaur $33.0m

2 Gladiator $16.9m

3 Road Trip $15.3m

4 Battlefield Earth $4.8m

This might actually be understating it: last weekend BE took $11.5m, only 76.52% of the predicted take of $14.2m. The raw figures for this week's performance show the startling drop in the film's grosses:

Monday

Daily take: $852,686 Overnight change: -70.0% Average take per showing: $258 Total take: $12,401,584 #: 4

Tuesday

Daily take: $763,616 Overnight change: -10.4% Average take per showing: $231 Total take: $13,165,200 #: 5

Wednesday

Daily take: $611,633 Overnight change: -19.9% Average take per showing: $185 Total take: $13,776,833 #: 6

Thursday

Daily take: $553,568 Overnight change: -9.5% Average take per showing: $167 Total take: $14,330,401 #: 7