Hitsville can’t wait to see Tropic Thunder; he’s traveling and missed the screening. Stiller’s funny, Robt. Downey’s the man, Zoolander was a hoot, there’s the Hollywood satire, etc. etc. etc.

But none of that doesn’t mean that DreamWorks didn’t spend too much money on it, that it isn’t going to be a flop, or that certain parts of the industry media haven’t been played like a fiddle to minimize the inevitable image problems that result. Consider Nikki Finke, the usually pugnacious industry blogger, and her ginger handling of the latest box office on the film:

Very early Thursday numbers for Tropic Thunder’s domestic box office are running around $4.5 million after its Wednesday opening take of $6.5 million in 3,319 theaters. And tonight DreamWorks/Paramount is starting to revise downward the weekend and 5-day forecasts for the R-rated movie-within-a-movie comedy from Ben Stiller.

And just a few days ago?

Here is what my box office gurus are predicting: low $30sM for Friday-Saturday-Sunday and low $40sM for the 5 days. As one of my experts analyzes, “Unfortunately, a few of the tracking services say that Tropic won’t be as high as Pineapple. They are saying about $35M for the 5 days. My gut is higher. I bet $42M for the 5 days. The reviews could not be better, the heat is huge, people love comedy. I think it will surprise.“

Emphases added. Yeah, well the film’s box office was surprisingly low. Generally Finke would be chirping about the releasing studio’s bad fortune, but there’s a strange forcefield that emanates from anything having to do with Steven Speilberg, and the DreamWork’s PR machine has been working overtime to drum up publicity and spin the film as a Paramount flop and not a DreamWorks one. (If you recall, just a few weeks ago the film’s success was so hyped the NY Times was calling it a “gift” from DW to Paramount.) Yesterday, Finke was still seeing it from DreamWorks’ perspective:

Well, the studio fully anticipated the soft Wednesday opening …

They expected it! That was for Wednesday; and now, an equally soft Thursday result. This I guess could be said to be unexpected. And that $42M yesterday … ?

Currently, the studio is expecting Pineapple Express-like North American gross of low to mid $20sM for the Friday-Saturday-Sunday weekend (down from low $30sM) and mid $30sM for the 5 days (down from $40M).

Forgive the close parsing but note a) that $42M subtly sank to $40M before b) sinking even more to “mid $30sM” to a c) “Pineapple Express-like” gross for the weekend, which strikes one as odd because Express is such a big hit, until you realize d) that she’s talking about that film’s second weekend gross.

In other words a film with three times the stars and three times the budget and half the opening box office may not be able to beat last week’s top opener on the second week out.

Finke has also raised her estimate of the film’s cost to more than $110M, up from $100M. Putting that budget increase together with the box office estimate drop, in other words, DreamWorks lost $20 million overnight.