Disney's "HSM 3" Sets Box Office Record: What Does It Mean for Disney's Strategy?

Disney's (DIS) High School Musical 3: Senior Year brought in $42 million at the U.S. box office its opening weekend, the biggest opening weekend ever for a movie musical.

This performance validates Disney's strategy—it built the HSM brand, debuting the first and second films in the franchise on the Disney Channel before making the bigger investment in bringing the film to the big screen. The $42 million beats the opening weekend of Mamma Mia this summer with $27.8 million and Hairspay's opening last year, $27.5 million. "High School Musical's" opening, by coming in at the high end of expectations, guarantees we'll be seeing an HSM 4.

Another movie opening this weekend hit a record—Lions Gate's (LGF) Saw V grossed $30.5 million, making it the fourth sequel in a row to open at more than $30 million. Pretty impressive for a franchise that's consistently made on such a low budget, and one that doesn't have much variety in its annual release every year around Halloween. Now the franchise is neck and neck with Friday the 13th as the highest grossing horror franchise of all time, and Saw did it with only five films, while there are 11 in the Friday the 13th series.

The financial crisis doesn't seem to be keeping people from going to the movies—the total box office for this weekend was up 35 percent over the year-ago period. This makes the fifth weekend in a row that the box office has beaten last year's. So far the box office is financial-crisis resistant, we'll see how it holds up.