Friday Box Office Analysis
By Kim Hollis
April 21, 2018
BoxOfficeProphets.com
...Super Troopers 2. I started realizing that this film was going to have a good opening day when a couple of my late 20-something friends mentioned that they had plans to see the movie on opening night. Then, when I was at the theater last night to watch Isle of Dogs, there were a whole bunch of people at the concession counter. WAY more than usual. And most of them were getting beer.
Ladies and gentlemen, Super Troopers 2, a movie that was crowdfunded and has a $5 million budget, made that money back yesterday as it earned $7.9 million. It will wind up making in one weekend what the first film managed in its entire box office run - or somewhere close to it, anyway. Congratulations to the Broken Lizard team for finding the top spot at the box office, even if only for a day.
I say that it's probably only for a day because this movie is going to be super-frontloaded. Most of its audience will have turned out on 4/20 for reasons, and clearly, there was some level of pent up 17-year demand. I'll estimate $15.8 million for the weekend, which is really quite marvelous, especially since it will easily become Broken Lizard's highest grossing film ever.
Our second new wide release was from Amy Schumer. I Feel Pretty was estimated by some to be the likely winner of the weekend, though I never really felt it. The comedy may yet manage the top spot, though I suspect it might also have some slight frontloading as well - though not nearly to the degree of Super Troopers 2. Even so, it should come in just ahead of Super Troopers 2 with $17.5 million.
You may wonder which movie will win the weekend, then. I'm predicting that A Quiet Place will return to the top spot after getting knocked out last week when Rampage had some *ahem* questionable Friday-Saturday-Sunday splits to take that #1 position. Yesterday, it earned $6.4 million, a decline of only 39 percent. That number will only improve throughout the weekend, and I would expect the John Krasinski breakout film to earn $23.1 million.
We've got a couple of other new films hanging around the lower rungs of the top ten, and I'm going to start with the unexpected one first. Bharat Ane Nenu, an Indian Telugu-language political thriller, took in $1.6 million from just 305 venues. Films aimed at this niche demographic always manage to do well, and yet we always manage to be taken by surprise. For the weekend, Let's give it $3.8 million.
The other new release is Traffik, a Lionsgate flick featuring Laz Alonso, Omar Epps, and Paula Patton. It earned $1.4 million in just a little over 1,000 locations and should finish the weekend with $3.6 million.
Last week's winner, Rampage, was down 57 percent as it earned $5 million. Since I'm pretty confident that Warner Bros. super overestimated this one last weekend, they're going to have to be more conservative in weekend two. $17.9 million will make it close between it and I Feel Pretty.
After a solid debut that already means it earned its budget back and more, the Blumhouse film Truth or Dare fell an expected 70 percent, all the way down to $2.5 million. Look for $7.5 million for the weekend and STILL enough money to more than cover the expenses.