Friday Box Office Analysis
By Tim Briody
April 22, 2017
The collapse of Fate of the Furious combined with largely ignored new releases make this one of the saddest weekends of 2017 at the box office.
The Fate of the Furious
After last weekend’s “disappointing” (if almost $100 million can be called that) opening weekend, The Fate of the Furious plunges 75.4% from last Friday to $11.2 million. The ironic part is that despite the monumental drop, Friday alone would still probably be enough to win the weekend. This performance confirms what we suspected a while ago: this franchise exists for the rest of the world. Despite “merely” ending up in the $200 million range a la the fifth ($209.8 million) and sixth films ($238.6 million), 8 Fast 8 Furious is still a lock for a billion dollars worldwide, and shows that Furious 7 was the aberration and not a trend, and earned a chunk of its box office (domestically and worldwide) from people curious to see how they’d send off Paul Walker. For the weekend, it’s still an easy victory, with $34.7 million.
Unforgettable
The highest opener of the weekend is the critically ridiculed (and ironically titled) Unforgettable with just $1.7 million on Friday. Katherine Heigl once again proves she’s box office kryptonite, as even the supposed camp factor here can’t save it from a weekend of just $5 million.
Born in China
Disney’s Earth Day nature documentary earned $1.6 million on Friday, in just 1,508 theaters. It’s headed to a weekend comparable to that of recent releases Monkey Kingdom ($1.5 million Friday, $4.5 million weekend in 2015) and Bears ($2.3 million Friday, $4.7 million over Easter weekend in 2014). Born in China was of course released in China last year where it earned almost $10 million in US dollars, so anything here is pretty much extra. A weekend of $4.4 million is what it’s looking at.
The Promise
Historical drama The Promise made $1.4 million on Friday, tied for sixth place. When award bait goes bad, it’s never pretty. Let’s go with $4.2 million and that’ll be the end of that one.
|
Projected Estimates for the Top Ten (Three-Day)
|
Projected
Rank |
Film |
Estimated Gross |
|
1
|
The Fate of the Furious
|
34.7
|
|
2
|
The Boss Baby
|
12.1
|
|
3
|
Beauty and the Beast
|
9.2
|
|
4
|
Unforgettable
|
5.0
|
|
5
|
Born in China
|
4.4
|
|
6
|
Going in Style
|
4.4
|
|
7
|
The Promise
|
4.2
|
|
8
|
Gifted
|
3.8
|
|
9
|
The Smurfs: The Lost Village
|
3.5
|
|
10
|
The Lost City of Z
|
1.8
|
|
|
|
|
Print this column
