Weekend Wrap-Up

Angry Birds Slingshot to the Top

By David Mumpower and Kim Hollis

May 22, 2016

She doesn't look so angry.

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How well this strategy works depends on audience reception to Angry Birds. Those results are mixed. Its Cinemascore of B+ is modest but acceptable. Its RottenTomatoes score of 43% is troubling. This film is obviously not directed toward critics but instead small children, though. The B+ Cinemascore is the more important data point, and it helps that no genre competition exists for family films until Finding Dory in four weekends. That leaves it fighting long-in-the-tooth titles such as Jungle Book and Zootopia. At this point, the ultimate fate of Angry Birds is still in question, but it aced its first exam with more than $143 million to start.

What’s so civil about war, anyway? Marvel fans continue to debate this answer as the #TeamCappy vs. #TeamTony debate continues for a third weekend. Captain America: Civil War fell to second place after 14 straight days at the top of the North American box office. Another $33.1 million brings its domestic total to $347.4 million. Depending on your perspective, there are two ways to evaluate this total. The glowingly positive one is to mention that the third Captain America movie has a decent chance to overtake Iron Man 3’s $409 million to become the strongest non-Avengers Marvel performer.

The more negative take that a lot of critics have chosen is to compare it to the second Avengers movie, Age of Ultron. That title had earned $372 million after 17 days in theaters. The rationale for this comparison is that Civil War is an Avengers movie in every way save for name, which is valid. Still, the movie has a $250 million budget and a global take of $1.05 billion. With the same financial outlay, it’s only $400 million behind Age of Ultron after only 17 days in release. Compare that with Batman v Superman, which cost more in terms of negative cost and completely died at the box office at $870 million.




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Marvel continues to be the gold standard in superhero cinema, and the proof of the statement is that the top two releases of 2016, Deadpool and Civil War, are both from them. Disney is having an almost incomprehensible year as they either own the characters involved with or produced the top four films of the year. Joining Deadpool and Civil War on this list are two titles we’ll discuss below, Zootopia and The Jungle Book. The latter of those two films will pass Batman v Superman by Tuesday of this week.

Comedy sequels have had a rough go on it recently, with projects from Horrible Bosses 2 to Ride Along 2 failing to capitalize on the strength of the original film to increase their opening weekend box office take. The latest movie to follow this trend is Neighbors 2, which couldn't even manage half the opening weekend total of its predecessor. Again starring Seth Rogen and Zac Efron, the film added an element of girl power by making the "enemy" a set of hard partying sorority girls, including Chloe Moretz.


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