New at BOP: Review: Matrix Resurrections Movie Review: Moonfall Movie Reviews: Scream The #1 Movie in America November Forecast The Many Saints of Newark October Forecast New Trivia Question All site updates Share & Save   Tweet Print this column

As the Marvel comic universe turns B and C-level players like Ant-Man ($180.2 million), Guardians of the Galaxy ($333.1 million) and Deadpool ($343.6 million and still counting) into ridiculous box office hits, the DC Extended Universe (their equivalent of the Marvel Cinematic Universe where “it’s all connected”) technically only began with Man of Steel, which did earn $291 million. The financial success of Dawn of Justice is of the utmost importance for Warner Bros. as in addition to two Justice League movies, each member has their own feature film in the works over the next four years. (They’ve also got Suicide Squad out later this summer, which at this point is also a question mark in terms of box office.) While it’s a lock for a tremendous opening weekend, the $250 million production budget (with a reported additional $150 million marketing budget) is looking mighty big right now. Domestically speaking, of course.

From the moment of its announcement and the casting of Affleck and Gadot, Dawn of Justice has essentially had a nearly three year marketing campaign so awareness is at a ridiculous high. What the negative reviews are going to do is scare off the small number of fence-sitters and hurt its long term prospects. While WB is probably banking on Dawn of Justice ruling the box office until the next superhero movie (May’s Captain America: Civil War), the negative response makes it more likely it will have run its course by that point rather than stay at the top. None of that matters too much for this weekend, however. It’s also Easter Sunday, which generally has a negative effect on Sunday but it’s hard to notice when you get to the blockbusters. Furious 7 still earned $147 million over Easter last year, for instance. Man of Steel did start with $116 million in June 2013, and while Batman v Superman will better that significantly, between the bad reviews and the previews giving away a little too much, there will still be the feeling that DC once again left money on the table, as Dawn of Justice comes in with a weekend of $153 million.

In all the years this site has been covering box office, there has never been anything like My Big Fat Greek Wedding. The comedy opened in April 2002 in just a couple of hundred theaters. Though old school word-of-mouth (in the pre-social media days even!), its box office held well over the next few months as it gradually added screens. It became a full blown cultural phenomenon through the summer of that year, culminating with three straight weeks as the #2 movie at the box office, spending a total of 18 weeks in the top ten, earning $241.4 million (on a budget of just $5 million), setting various records such as becoming the highest grossing film to never hit #1 and being the highest grossing romantic comedy of all time and causing a surge in sales of Windex. Nia Vardalos’s follow up projects in the years since have been…less successful (including a failed adaptation of the movie into a 2003 TV show that lasted just seven episodes), so she finally goes back to the well 14 years later with My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2.

Toula (Vardalos) and Ian (John Corbett) are now dealing with life with a moody high schooler who is preparing for college while attempting to keep their spark alive. When a bombshell of a family secret is revealed, the entire Portokalos family has to plan another wedding of the big and fat variety and all the wacky Greek hijinks ensue. The sequel brings back pretty much everybody in the extended family for said wacky Greek hijinks. It’s some good counter programming for the fights and explosions in Batman v. Superman, but critical consensus is that it simply doesn’t recapture the magic of the first. Opening in more than 3,000 theaters (the first movie peaked at just over 2,000 screens), My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 is looking at a weekend of $16 million.

Zootopia fell just 28% in its third weekend to $37.1 million to complete the threepeat and cross $200 million in the process. Easter Sunday is generally beneficial to family movies so it’s in line for another great hold despite ceding the top spot to Dawn of Justice. Give it another weekend of $26 million.

Finally, in the “We Told You So” department, The Divergent Series: Allegiant underperformed with just $29 million on the weekend, a 44% drop from the opening weekend of Insurgent. And there’s still one more movie to go! That sound you heard was Lionsgate drastically slashing the production budget. At this rate of the franchise’s decline, Ascendant will probably earn $29 million *total,* in what’s an outright audience rejection of the attempted cash grab. Both Divergent and Insurgent dropped over 50% in their second weekend, so look for Allegiant to do the same with about $13 million.

Forecast: Weekend of March 25-27, 2016
Rank	Film	Number of Sites	Changes in Sites from Last	Estimated Gross ($)
1	Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice	4,242	New	153.4
2	Zootopia	3,670	-289	26.0
3	My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2	3,132	New	15.9
4	The Divergent Series: Allegiant	3,740	0	13.2
5	Miracles From Heaven	3,047	0	8.3
6	10 Cloverfield Lane	2,802	-625	6.8
7	Deadpool	2,336	-588	5.6
8	London Has Fallen	2,173	-838	3.5
9	Whiskey Tango Foxtrot	847	-1,232	1.2
10	The Perfect Match	658	-267	0.9

Continued:       1       2