Weekend Wrap-Up
Beauty, Beast, Baby Face Off Again While Audiences Wait for Furious
By John Hamann
April 9, 2017
The question now for The Boss Baby and DreamWorks Animation is if it can turn its $125 million production budget into a win for the studio. At this point, it would appear that the Alec Baldwin-led animated feature will finish in the same ballpark as Home, which finished domestically with $177 million. Home cost an even more ludicrous $135 million to make, and earned $386 million globally, maybe (and I mean maybe) eking out a small profit for the companies involved (Fox distributed both Home and The Boss Baby domestically, but won't be doing that anymore, as Universal has picked up the rights). The Boss Baby has earned $110 million overseas. This movie still has a long way to go, but we will know more after it faces off against a gargantuan like the Fast/Furious movie and the second weekend of Smurfs, a franchise that somehow, some way has shown ridiculously good legs with the first two films.
That means that Beauty and the Beast finishes in second place, though the numbers could change with actuals tomorrow. With Beauty destined to gross more than $20 million this weekend, which is a rare thing for a film released in March. Only The Hunger Games ($21.1 million fourth frame) and Zootopia ($24 million) were March releases that hit $20 million in weekend four. Beauty and the Beast took in $25 million, off a decent 45%, considering the smash brought $407 million into its fourth weekend.
The weekend gross puts it at 15th on the all-time domestic grosser list, as it passes huge films like Toy Story 3 ($415 million) and Hunger Games: Catching Fire ($424.7 million). This flick is a brute, smashing its way up the record lists like nobody's business. Overseas totals have cracked the half billion mark already, and Beauty will be crossing the billion dollar worldwide mark at any time. It still has a lot of gas left in the tank, too. A stateside finish around the $500 million mark still seems possible to me, with higher totals still possible. Beauty and the Beast will still be in the top ten when Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2 hits theaters, as the baton is passed from one Disney billion dollar winner to another.
Third spot goes to Smurfs: The Lost Village. Sony got a lot smarter with the third film in the franchise, as they figured out that these films can be completely and utterly terrible, and the under 12 fanbase will bring them $562 million worldwide. With the pressure off, the latest Smurfs film still stinks (according to reviews), but it at least beat the first two with critics. Smurfs: The Lost Village earned a 39% fresh rating, whereas the first film came in at 22% fresh, and the second was a woeful 13% fresh. In terms of box office, the second film caved compared to the first moneymaker, earning $347.5 million worldwide compared to the the original's $562 million. And that my friends, is the saddest part of all of this. The first two films made over $900 million worldwide against a combined budget of $215 million, so you are going to lose your job in you don't make a third. Too bad they didn't invest just a tiny bit more into a solid story for the third picture. The core audience loved it though, as the Cinemascore was an A.
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