Friday Box Office Estimates

When Disney gave themselves an extra week of space at the box office by pushing into an April release for Avengers: Infinity War, no one else moved a muscle. As a result, there are just three counterprogrammers opening wide this weekend, the best performing of which is Pantelion and Lionsgate’s Overboard remake, aimed at the Spanish-speaking market. This will be Eugenio Derbez’s strongest U.S. launch as a brand so far, even if the number looks small. Focus is opening Tully on more than double the screens that Young Adult launched, with about the same result. Electric’s Bad Samaritan is looking like an overreach on 2,007 screens. And the doc RBG will crack $10k per screen on 34 for Magnolia, while it could have probably been stronger at another moment… but hard to say when… hard to plan in the fury of the political climate.

Friday Box Office Estimates

Avengers lands. Disney slots it just ahead of Star Wars: The Last Jedi, well off of the opening of The Force Awakens. But why split ten-million-dollar hairs? And Disney gets a further burst out of Black Panther. A Quiet Place holds against the storm, closing in on $150 million domestic. On the exclusive front, Orthodox drama Disobedience draws a strong $40,000-plus per screen on five. Also likely cracking $10k is Claire Denis’ Let The Sunshine In.

Friday Box Office Estimates

Super Troopers 2 did what every sequel wants to do, opening higher than the original (albeit sixteen years later). It was also an unexpected slow-roll kind of modern sequel… it’s not on Netflix. Meanwhile, A Quiet Place continues to hold like a champ. I Feel Pretty isn’t… frustrating in many ways, but its pitch was as unsophisticated as Trainwreck‘s was surprising. And Bharat Ane Nenu cracks the Top 10 in a great weekend for the independent sector, a week ahead of the Avengers 3 tsunami.

Friday Box Office Estimates

A perfectly solid Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson opening with Rampage… which apparently isn’t a good movie. But the story of the weekend is the hold for A Quiet Place under 30% for Opening Friday vs second Friday. Historically, there are more than 1,000 second weekend holds of 30% or less, but only 40 that don’t involve a holiday weekend on that second weekend and only 30 that aren’t animated. Truth or Dare is looking like the fifth biggest first film (not a sequel) of a Blumhouse movie. It’s not Split or Get Out, but a strong launch. Grace Jones and The Rider both look to be over $210k per-screen in exclusives.

Friday Box Office Estimates

A Quiet Place (greenlit under the previous studio administration) makes more noise than tracking suggested… and don’t be surprised if it beats expectations this Friday opening, playing especially well with women while still playing great for men. It will be Paramount’s biggest opening since 2016’s Star Trek Beyond and the biggest non-franchise opening (though this story may well continue) since 2014’s Interstellar. A solid if unremarkable opening for Blockers, which could be leggy once word-of-mouth clarifies the film’s tone for a wider audience. Lean on Pete should have an over-$10k per-screen while You Were Never Really Here delivers a ball peen hammer to the exclusive competition on three screens that will do nearly $60k per.

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.

Friday Box Office Estimates

Weak openings for Game Night and Annihilation are less interesting than the continuing story of Black Panther, which will pass $700 million worldwide this weekend. Only nine movies have ever cracked $1.3 billion and Black Panther is sure to be the tenth. It will likely fall behind The Avengers and be the all-time #2 Marvel movie. (But it probably won’t pass Furious 7 as the biggest non-summer/non-holiday grosser.) These landmark-porn details distract from its profound success: the only horse race between films is created by the media.

Friday Box-Office Estimates

Roar.

Friday Estimates

Wedding bonds, rabbit leaps, terror topped.

Friday Box Office Estimates

One half-ass release, barely promoted or advertised. Holdovers defined by the two weekends since two wide releases for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day weekend with a single weak studio release each. Star Wars out of the Top 10 long before Jumanji. Some Oscar boost in expansions, though nothing blowing up. Super Bowl Sunday. Winter Olympics coming. Welcome to February.

Friday Box Office Estimates

Hollywood leaves the weekend to holdovers, with just the final Maze Runner opening wide. Hostiles expands and finds some buyers, but didn’t have the Oscar rocket fuel it had hoped for. The Shape of Water expands into the Top 10, joining The Post as the only Best Picture nominees in the 10.

Friday Box Office Estimates

This is the weekend where Split opened to $40 million last year and xXx3 to $20 million. Nothing like that this year. Although a horror film, Split had a strong appeal to women. 12 Strong and Den of Thieves, no. The one female reach-out, Forever My Girl, looking like warmed-over Nicholas Sparks, is on only 1,115 screens and may be adversely affected by The Women’s March. These three new titles will not gross as much this weekend as the opening of Split last year. Oscar expansions should turn up in the Top 10 next week, following nominations. But there’s no big opener until February 9.

Friday Box Office Estimates

Jumanji continues as king of the jungle. The Post expands pretty much as expected. Liam Neeson and Jaume Collet-Serra team up again and do a little better than Run All Night, but not as well as Non-Stop. Proud Mary comes up short of tracking, but not as badly as it probably deserves. And Paddington 2 starts slow, but should pop up to #4 for the weekend as kids flood the room today and tomorrow.

Friday Box Office Estimates

The first weekend of 2018 is already stronger than the first weekend of 2017, led by a single newcomer, Insidious 4, whose Friday gross is about 2.5x last year’s first release, Underworld 5. Likewise, top holdover Jumanji 2 is about 25% stronger than last year’s Hidden Figures. And Star Wars: The Last Jedi is about 10% ahead of Rogue One, both on their 22nd day, as TLJ heads to something around $625 million domestic, aka #5 all-time domestic. Molly’s Game and Darkest Hour expand significantly while a few still-limited awards hopefuls expand incrementally.

Friday Box Office Estimates

Star Wars: The Last Jedi becomes the second fastest release to pass $500 million domestic today, ahead of Jurassic World and showing no signs of negative drag, aside from not matching the phenomenal opening of The Force Awakens, the first Star Wars movie in a decade. Jumanji: Welcome To The Jungle is living up to box office expectations, heading to over $175 million domestic through the holiday, making it the biggest non-F&F Dwayne Johnson movie ever. Things are less happy after these two, with Pitch Perfect 3, The Greatest Showman, Ferdinand, All The Money In The World, Darkest Hour, and Downsizing are all underperforming even modest hopes.

Friday Box Office Estimates

The arrival of five, count ’em, five wide releases looking to take advantage of the Christmas window with one more landing on Christmas Day means… well… there are two more wide releases than last year in this window, and in limited releases meant to go wide, one fewer than last year’s five. So as the marketplace shows that people are willing to go see movies they are interested in on virtually any date, the industry keeps packing them into the traditional windows. Theatrical isn’t in trouble… but myopia causes problems, even on the holiday weekend. It’s not that the market can’t expand to allow for multiple big hits. It’s that the messaging is getting so thin with so many titles in play at one time, it can’t get an attentive foothold to propel bigger numbers.