The Ben Affleck blockbuster Pearl Harbor opens in US theatres on Friday, and despite early lacklustre reviews, the Disney film looks poised to break a series of box office records.

“I’ll be shocked if it doesn’t do $100 million,” says one rival studio executive of Pearl Harbor’s first weekend.

According to National Research Group (NRG), the firm responsible for predicting box office figures, interest in Pearl Harbor is sky high. Seventy-five per cent of those polled claimed they were “definitely interested” in seeing the film. And the respondents weren’t just teenage males hot for explosions and model airplanes. NRG divides potential viewers into four categories – young male, older male, young female, older female – all of which posted over 70 per cent interest in the film

In 1997, The Lost World: Jurassic Park grossed $90.2 million rendering the previous four-day record extinct. Despite playing in fewer theatres, Pearl Harbor may overtake the beast.

“There’s a certain audience that comes out only once a year,” says Chuck Viane, president of Buena Vista Distribution. “And this is the one they’re coming to this year.”

To entice female viewers, Disney has been playing up the love triangle story and comparing the film to Titanic. With females expected to turn out in droves, fashion insiders at trade publication Women’s Wear Daily expect the film to spark a major fashion shift.

Costume designer Michael Kaplan – the man behind the early Eighties Flashdance craze – outfitted the Pearl Harbor ladies in frilly blouses, cinched-waist dresses with longer hemlines, and thick-heeled shoes. “The 1940s and Fifties is viewed as a simpler, kinder time with quality clothes,” says one fashion editor. “If the movie connects with people, the emotional ties to the movie will fuel the fashion trends.”

However, if the critics are right, the film may not make that connection. One reviewer called the three-hour epic “a collage of every awful cliché you can think of” while another dubbed it a “dumb, soulless behemoth that delivers the cinematic equivalent of shell shock.”

Pearl Harbor is scheduled to open in the UK on June 1.

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