Friday Box Office Analysis
By Kim Hollis
May 4, 2019
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Yes, Avengers: Endgame will once again be the top movie of the weekend and by a whole lot. The big question is whether it will grab the record for biggest second weekend from Star Wars: The Force Awakens. You might be thinking to yourself that it's a bad sign that Endgame might not get that second weekend record, but the thing you have to keep in mind on Star Wars is that its second weekend was Christmas. That time on the calendar is perfect for box office and with its weekend comprised of Christmas Day through the 27th, it was SUPER perfect for a strong performance.
Anyway, looking at Endgame, it earned $40.6 million yesterday. That's a 74 percent decline from last Friday, which did have Thursday night previews factored in as well. In case you're wondering, Infinity War dropped 70 percent, so the latest Avengers film is right in line with its Friday-to-Friday depreciation. If we give Endgame a similar multiplier to Infinity War, it should finish the weekend with $148.1 million. I suspect Disney will actually give it $150 million just to round up. Since I do think they'll want it to have the second weekend record (they're competing with themselves, but still), they might even take it up to $152 million or so. They can always pull some back from the weekdays if they want to manipulate the numbers.
For those keeping score, after eight days in theaters, Avengers: Endgame is #12 on the all-time domestic box office list and #5 on the all-time worldwide box office chart. It has almost hit $2 billion worldwide in this short time, and should get to the #2 slot with ease. I don't see why it wouldn't pass Avatar for the top spot, either. It will be over $600 million by the end of the weekend, just 10 days. Crazy.
So, some other movies debuted this weekend and stuff. The best of them was (surprisingly) The Intruder, kind of a modern-day Pacific Heights featuring Meagan Good, Michael Ealy, and Dennis Quaid. It made $3.9 million yesterday and should finish the weekend with $11 million.
The Seth Rogen/Charlize Theron comedy Long Shot earned just $3.6 million, proving that Rogen's shelf life has probably reached its expiration date. This one was well-reviewed and had funny enough previews, but the marketing was pretty sparse. It probably doesn't help that it's a Lionsgate property - they're typically better at marketing scary than funny. Look for around $10 million for the weekend, and I'm not sure how much it keeps an audience considering that The Hustle releases next weekend and might capture a lot of the female demographic.
I guess that STX Entertainment can at least say that Uglydolls only had a budget of $45 million or so, because thank goodness for that. It earned just $2.5 million yesterday and will probably compete with Long Shot for that $10 million range. It does skew super young, which probably is a benefit since those are the kids who aren't old enough to sit through the three-hour Endgame.