Friday Box-Office Estimates

“Ready Player 15.2 Million.”

Friday Box Office Estimates

Pacific Rim Uprising will land in first place, but only because of timing, off 25% from the original. Black Panther falls to #2 while passing The Last Jedi and Avengers domestically. Tough weekend. Sherlock Gnomes was left on the lawn… no one saw the dog. Soderbergh’s iPhone epic, Unsane, has the double-trouble of a still-unsettled marketing formula and Claire Foy as another Netflix star who can’t draw American audiences to a theater. (Universal would have opened this, regardless.) Wes Anderson arrives on 27 screens to about $60k per, which marks the first time a Wes has opened on more than five screens since Bottle Rocket and suggests a frustrated distributor.

Friday Box Office Estimates

WB’s Tomb Raider takes Friday from Black Panther, the first time it’s dropped to second in a month… but look for Panther to strike back over the weekend, in line with its weeks of over-performing on Saturdays. It could be close in Sunday estimates with both films near $26 million. But the surprise of the weekend is the big number for I Can Only Imagine, a religious family drama released by Roadside for Lionsgate for LD, another reminder of an under-served audience that is white and middle-class, likely grossing most of its dollars outside the major markets on just 1,629 screens. Love, Simon opens modestly, but not embarrassingly so, given the lack of movie star power.

Friday Box Office Estimates

Disney’s A Wrinkle In Time launches just ahead of Disney’s Black Panther, which will be the story over the weekend. Wrinklehas the upside of being a family movie, which should offer a Saturday bump, but Panther has had Saturday family bumps of 65% and 85%, which Wrinkle may not match. And then Sunday…

Also opening, Aviron’s second release, a picked-up sequel to a 2008 Rogue-Focus release, The Strangers… which will likely open to about half the original. And at the $3 million opening level, STX’s Gringo and Entertainment Studios’ The Hurricane Heist.

Friday Box Office Estimates

Get Out opened to $33 million Oscar weekend last year, and goes to the wire with a Best Picture nomination this Weekend. Red Sparrow, not so much. Jennifer Lawrence held the mantle of Biggest Star In The World for a moment, but an under-$20 million open for this film argues that she needs to make better non-franchise choices. Also not opening, Death Wish, which didn’t make an argument about why it was more than a day at the White House. Black Panther stays on the prowl, getting to $450 million domestic in 15 days and maintaining expectations of a $600 million-plus domestic total, which has only happened only five times in box office history.