Weekend Forecast for March 3-5, 2017
By Reagen Sulewski
March 3, 2017
The Shack is an adaptation of 2007 best-selling religious/spiritual novel that wasn't without its controversy. Sam Worthington stars as a man whose daughter is murdered on a camping trip by a serial killer (good start!), and after falling into a deep depression, starts to receive mysterious notes to come to the shack in the woods where his daughter's murder probably happened. Once there, he starts to see visions of the shack as a lush paradise, and is visited by three figures who represent... well, I'm not going to tell you if you can't guess.
The story is pitched as a novel about acceptance and healing, but doesn't seem to realize what a horrendous message its sending. Reviewers haven't missed that, giving it a hard pass as treacly and borderline offensive with a lot of sermonizing (perhaps not a bad thing to its target audience!). Its worst sin, however, seems to be just being boring and talky, playing a bit like a more explicitly religious version of this holiday season's misfire Collateral Beauty. This is likely to appeal just to church-going crowd, and maybe not even that, as it's been heavily criticized within that world. I'd look for just $8 million here this weekend.
Shamelessly nabbing the basic plot structure of Groundhog Day, Before I Fall moves the repeated-day time loop premise to high school, where doe-eyed Zoey Deutch (daughter of Lea Thompson) experiences the same day over and over again, improving each time until it hopefully no longer ends with her in a car careening off the road. A somewhat shallow and toothless version of the scenario, it at least has a positive message (be nice to people! What a revelation) and an attractive-looking cast, but it also has the problem of appealing to teen audiences, who are small in number and relatively disinterested in non-splody movies. A modest $5 million for this weekend should be in store.
Circling back to last weekend, Get Out saw its reverent reviews catapult it into a $33 million weekend, the rare case where critical acclaim pushed a movie into a huge weekend – and for a horror film at that. Thanks to amazing word-of-mouth, it has a chance to decent legs, though that's a lowered bar for a horror film, and around $21 million will fit that bill this weekend.
The LEGO Batman movie lost its top spot, though it still held well with $19 million and will hit the $150 million mark in the very near future. Particularly as its the only real family option this weekend, it should bring in about $12 million. John Wick: Chapter 2 seems on track for around $110 million or so domestic, and should earn about $6 million in this frame, perhaps losing a bit to Logan, but not much relatively.
Of Oscar films, La La Land has the best chance for legs of films that were already in wide release, probably holding at $5 million after losing out on Best Picture – though the circumstances in which it lost make for some solid publicity. Similarly, Moonlight will relaunch in around 1,500 venues this weekend, but will probably still struggle to make a mark on the box office, perhaps with around $3 million.
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Forecast: Weekend of March 3-5. 2017
|
Rank |
Film |
Number of
Sites |
Changes in Sites
from Last |
Estimated
Gross ($) |
|
1
|
Logan
|
4,071
|
New
|
77.3
|
|
2
|
Get Out
|
2,938
|
+157
|
21.3
|
|
3
|
The Lego Batman Movie
|
3,656
|
-401
|
11.9
|
|
4
|
The Shack
|
2,888
|
New
|
8.5
|
|
5
|
John Wick: Chapter 2
|
2,475
|
-479
|
6.3
|
|
6
|
Before I Fall
|
2,346
|
New
|
5.4
|
|
7
|
La La Land
|
1,411
|
-322
|
5.0
|
|
8
|
The Great Wall
|
2,308
|
-1,020
|
4.2
|
|
9
|
Hidden Figures
|
1,582
|
-440
|
4.0
|
|
10
|
Fifty Shades Darker
|
2,195
|
-1,021
|
3.9
|
Continued:
1
2
|
|
|
|
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