Weekend Wrap-Up
By Tim Briody
March 17, 2019
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Four new releases land in the top ten with varying degrees of success, but the weekend still belongs to Carol Danvers.
Captain Marvel does drop 55% from opening weekend, but it's still a very nice weekend of $69.3 million, giving it $266.2 million. As far as the Marvel Cinematic Universe goes, it passed Ant-Man and the Wasp ($216.6 million), Doctor Strange ($232.6 million) and Captain America: The Winter Soldier ($259.7 million) this weekend, and it's headed to at least $400 million, and there's certainly a scenario where it ends up fourth all time among the MCU (behind only Black Panther, Infinity War and Avengers), which would take $459 million (the total of Avengers: Age of Ultron). While there's some big releases on the way (where Captain Marvel could vacate the top spot as early as next weekend), with the release of the Avengers: Endgame trailer this week, Captain Marvel will only benefit as we get a little bit closer to that release at the end of April, as viewers find the best way to pregame the biggest release of 2019.
Wonder Park is the best of the new releases this weekend, earning $16 million, perhaps a notch ahead of expectations. From Paramount Animation and Nickelodeon (which brought us The SpongeBob SquarePants movie), it's actually an original idea they're turning into a future TV series on the cable channel, which Nickelodeon also did with Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius and The Barnyard, one of which was very successful and the other, a little less so. While $16 million is better than the lower teens initially expected, with a reported budget of $80-100 million, Wonder Park has a long way to go, and a TV series may not quite be enough.
Teen romance Five Feet Apart also slightly beats expectations with $13.1 million on the weekend. Starring Cole Sprouse (Riverdale) and Haley Lu Richardson (Edge of Seventeen/Split) as teens with cystic fibrosis who develop a relationship but cannot come into close contact with one another, it was the best reviewed of this weekend's releases, but that's not saying much as it rated 52% Fresh at Rotten Tomatoes. An original idea and not adapted from a novel, I'd argue they were trying to cash in on some of that The Fault In Our Stars money, even though that was almost five(!) years ago now. That said, they kept it cheap, costing only $7 million and it nearly doubled that on opening weekend so this will go down as a winner for Lionsgate and CBS Films.
How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World adds $9.3 million in its fourth weekend, giving it $135.6 million to date. Still behind the first two films at this same point despite the bigger opening, it's looking to fall a little short of the second film's $177 million. I think it's got one more okay weekend ahead of it before Dumbo becomes the family film of choice.
Tyler Perry Presents: Tyler Perry's A Madea Family Funeral (a Tyler Perry film) earns $8 million in its third weekend (-35%) and gives it $59 million, and is headed to be his second best performing Madea movie after it passes Boo! A Madea Halloween ($73.2 million), leaving it only behind 2009's Madea Goes to Jail, which earned $90 million.
We get a surprise in sixth place as No Manches Frida 2 earned $3.8 million in just 472 theaters. A sequel to a popular Mexican comedy from 2016 (which earned $3.6 million in 362 theaters here and placed 12th over Labor Day weekend that year), Pantelion Films (an arm of Lionsgate) went with a targeted release in the south and southwest and it paid off. Budget info isn't available, but it couldn't have cost that much to make, and it's likely anything earned in the US is gravy anyway.
Captive State is the final new release of the weekend, and could only manage $3.1 million despite 2,548 theaters. A sci-fi thriller about a futuristic America under control by an alien force or some such, it stars John Goodman, Vera Farmiga and Machine Gun Kelly for some reason. This is another one for the file of "films you didn't realize got theatrical releases when you stumble across it on Netflix in a year."
The LEGO Movie 2 finally crosses $100 million in its sixth weekend with $2.1 million and $101.3 million to date. The LEGO Movie crossed $100 million in...nine days. It's the fifth film of 2019 to cross $100 million but is the prime example of everything that's gone wrong with box office this year.
Alita: Battle Angel earns $1.9 million and has earned $81.8 million in five weekends. The domestic total is so-so given the budget, but it's killed it overseas, pushing $400 million worldwide, so we might get that sequel after all.
Green Book wraps up the top ten as we say farewell to the Best Picture and once again thank it for solving racism forever. It earns $1.2 million and has $82.6 million since its November debut.
Your top 12 films this weekend earned $130.7 million, ahead of last year's $122.1 million when Black Panther led for a fifth weekend with $26.6 million while Tomb Raider opened to $23.6 million and I Can Only Imagine surprised with $17.1 million.
Next weekend there's just one big release, but it's an important one: Jordan Peele's follow up to Get Out with another horror entry, simply titled Us.