Weekend Wrap-Up
by Tim Briody
April 22, 2018
With the release of Avengers: Infinity War moving up a weekend at the last possible moment, Hollywood played it safe this weekend, offering mostly mid-tier comedy releases that weren’t going to be world beaters, sending A Quiet Place back to the top of the box office for one more weekend.
In its third weekend, A Quiet Place rebounds to the top spot, dropping 33% from last weekend to an estimated $22 million and giving it $132.3 million to date. Fun fact, it’s now the #2 movie of 2018 for the next few days before Infinity War goes bonkers. It’s another good hold for a genre that’s generally not supposed to do that, but word-of-mouth is exceptionally strong. With just a $17 million budget, it’s on its way to being one of the year’s most profitable films, and is a badly needed hit for Paramount. If it can maintain these declines in the face of Infinity War, it’s going to make a run at $200 million, but $180 million or so is probably the most likely destination.
Rampage drops to second place as the video game adaptation starring The Rock drops 41% from opening weekend to $21 million, with a total of $66.6 million in two weekends. That’s slightly ahead of expectations for an action movie with average word-of-mouth. Anything under 50% was definitely a win here, with credit to The Rock. The better the hold for Rampage, the more that bodes well for the ridiculous looking Skyscraper, out in July.
Our first opener is in third place as Amy Schumer’s I Feel Pretty opens with $16.2 million. After being the driving force behind 2015’s Trainwreck ($110 million), Schumer’s film career seemingly, uh, derailed with the follow up, last year’s Snatched, which got Goldie Hawn out of retirement, but topped out at $45 million. This time, with a comedy that aims to send a message of body positivity, but got lousy reviews, we see how much goodwill Schumer lost from her last film, as even Snatched opened with $19.5 million before falling off a cliff. There’s a chance for somewhat better legs (Snatched had a 60% second weekend drop) as an alternative to Infinity War, but for her next film, she needs a hit.
Sixteen years in the making, Super Troopers 2 arrives in fourth place for the weekend with $14.7 million. The first Super Troopers is the definition of cult classic; it earned a total of $18.4 million back in 2002, yet turned out to be one of the more quotable comedies of the 2000s. After some less successful followups, the Broken Lizard comedy troupe turned to crowdfunding and raised $4.7 million, which secured further funding for the existence of the long-in-development film. Released on Friday, which was 4/20, a date that has absolutely zero significance that I can find by searching the internet, Super Troopers 2 was actually the #1 film, topping even A Quiet Place, with $7.9 million. Yet, with a weekend total of $14.7 million, Super Troopers 2 becomes one of the rare films to have a sub-2.0 weekend multiplier. The good news is even with this terrible weekend performance, it will have beaten the original Super Troopers’ box office by next weekend. The bad news is that $30 million is probably the best case scenario here, putting it in the history books as one of the more frontloaded films of all time.
Truth or Dare is the big loser on the weekend, dropping 58% to $7.9 million, a total that is still larger than the film’s budget, since it was made by Blumhouse, who specializes in cheap horror films made for pocket change. It has a total of $30.3 million in the bank after two weekends, and they’ll just keep on churning them out until something fails horribly.
Ready Player One continues to hold on, adding $7.5 million in its fourth weekend, off just 35% and giving it $126.1 million to date. A $150 million total is probably just out of reach at this point, and somehow there just feels like there was money left on the table here, given the popularity of the book and the presence of Steven Spielberg.
Blockers is in seventh place for the weekend, dipping 35% to $6.9 million and a respectable $48.2 million in three weekends. It’s headed to $65 million or so, and only cost Universal a reported $21 million, so they should be pretty happy with the result here.
There’s only one new release next weekend, so we’ll probably mention Black Panther one more time in this column, but this is its last true weekend of relevancy, and apparently audiences used it as a primer for Infinity War as it dropped only 20% to add another $4.6 million and give it $681 million after ten weekends in theaters. $700 million is so, so close, but it’s continuing to lose screens (and will probably lose more to Infinity War), so it probably needs a rerelease at some point later (Oscar push?) to get there.
Another new release lands in ninth place as Traffic earns $3.8 million in 1,046 theaters. Starring Paula Patton and Omar Epps, it’s a thriller that got a targeted release and minimal promotion, and thus this result.
Lastly, Isle of Dogs finishes in tenth place with $3.4 million and $24.3 million after five weekends in theaters and two in wide release. The Wes Anderson release wasn’t really able to expand its audience beyond “those who really like Wes Anderson movies,” and the stop-motion animation was probably off-putting to some, as it just passes the gross of Anderson’s The Fantastic Mr. Fox from 2009.
Your top 12 films this weekend totaled $113.4 million, decently ahead of last year’s $94.4 million when The Fate of the Furious led the box office in its second weekend with $38.4 million.
Next weekend gives us more evidence that we’re all just living in Marvel’s world, as they moved up the release of Infinity War from the first weekend of May to next weekend.
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Top Ten for Weekend of April 20-22, 2018
|
Rank |
Film |
Distributor |
Estimated
Gross ($) |
Weekly Change |
Cumulative
Gross ($) |
|
1
|
A Quiet Place
|
Paramount
|
22.0
|
-33%
|
132.3
|
|
2
|
Rampage
|
Warner Bros.
|
21.0
|
-41%
|
66.6
|
|
3
|
I Feel Pretty
|
STX Entertainment
|
16.2
|
New
|
16.2
|
|
4
|
Super Troopers 2
|
20th Century Fox
|
14.7
|
New
|
14.7
|
|
5
|
Truth or Dare
|
Universal
|
7.9
|
-58%
|
30.3
|
|
6
|
Ready Player One
|
Warner Bros.
|
7.5
|
-35%
|
126.1
|
|
7
|
Blockers
|
Universal
|
6.9
|
-35%
|
48.2
|
|
8
|
Black Panther
|
Walt Disney
|
4.6
|
-20%
|
681.0
|
|
9
|
Traffik
|
Lionsgate
|
3.8
|
New
|
3.8
|
|
10
|
Isle of Dogs
|
Fox Searchlight
|
3.4
|
-38%
|
24.3
|
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Box office data supplied by Exhibitor Relations
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