Friday Box Office Analysis
By Tim Briody
January 21, 2017
BoxOfficeProphets.com
The surprise winner on Friday is M. Night Shyamalan’s Split, earning solid $14.6 million on Friday. As part of the M. Night Shyamalan Redemption Tour, he took 2015’s The Visit to a $25.4 million opening after a $9.2 million Friday and now does even better with Split. Even with a weak Saturday and Sunday, Split is still headed for the best opening weekend of 2017 (and, briefly, the title of biggest film of the year) so far with $37.9 million.
xXx: Return of Xander Cage
Vin Diesel’s attempt to reboot one of his franchises is met with a shrug as it earns $7 million on Friday. The good news is this will better the $12.7 million that Ice Cube’s sequel State of the Union opened with in 2005, but the bad news is it’s not anywhere near the $44.5 million the original xXx started with way back in 2002 when it looked like we had a hot new franchise on our hands. We’ll go with $17.5 million for the weekend, a number we’ll all forget when Fast and Furious 8 makes a truckload of money later on this year.
The Founder
In just 1,115 theaters, the biopic of the McDonald’s magnate earned just $1 million on Friday, missing the top ten. That's not quite billions and billions served. Starring Michael Keaton, who had a pretty good 2014 and 2015 awards-wise, it had some faint Oscar hopes a few months ago, but nothing ever materialized, so here we are. The best it’s looking at is $3.2 million for the weekend.
Hidden Figures
After two weekends at the top, Hidden Figures drops just 19.5% from last Friday to add another $4.4 million to its total. It has earned $72.4 million so far and has a decent shot at making $100 million over the next few weeks. It should come in with $13.5 million for the weekend, and is one of the best box office stories of the short year so far.