Friday Box Office Analysis

By Kim Hollis

January 27, 2018

Good lord. There's zombies in our franchise, too?

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After dominating week after week during the holiday season, it's finally time to say "Thank you" to Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle as it passes the weekend box office championship trophy to a new contender.

That new contender is Maze Runner: The Death Cure, the final film in the trilogy that was adapted from a YA novel franchise. Honestly, this type of film does seem to have run its course, with even the finale of the Hunger Games series showing a decline. Everything else is "lesser Hunger Games," so I'd say that studios have to be happy when they don't have an Allegiant on their hands. (In case you've forgotten, that was the third film in the Divergent series, one that did so poorly that the studio decided to release the finale as a television film instead of in theaters.)

Anyway, Maze Runner 3 came in with a Friday total of $8.4 million, not bad, all things considered. That's still less than the first Friday of the second film, The Scorch Trials ($11 million) and the first film ($11.2 million). So, it's behaving similarly to all of those thematic YA-based brethren. Still, a weekend total of $22.7 million should be just fine, and Fox can crow about the fact that four of the films in the top 10 belong to them.




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Hostiles, a western from Entertainment Studios, did a lot better than most probably expected. It rode an expansion into 2,816 venues for a $3.4 million total yesterday, and its weekend should be right around $9 million. Its budget was somewhere between $40-50 million, and it will struggle to get there, but it won't be too terrible for the distributor's bottom line. At the very least, it'll serve as a good advertisement for the home video release.

We have one other new release in the top 10. Padmaavat is the first Indian film to be released in IMAX 3D. The film went through some controversy and turmoil in India, causing its release to be delayed to now. Most of that controversy is political in nature, and includes some vandalism to the sets and death threats to the director and lead performers. Anyway, Indian films always tend to do well in the US (regardless of controversy), and this one debuted on Friday with $1.7 million. Its weekend should be about $4.5 million, which will apparently raise the ire of a group known as the Karni Sena, a Rajput Caste organization that doesn't like how the Rajput queen Padmavati is depicted in the film.

Even though it won't win the weekend, Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle will continue to be a strong presence. With $3.8 million yesterday, it had just a 22% decline. It'll hold up well for yet another weekend as it earns $15.6 million. It's the Rock's biggest domestic film ever, but not even his biggest worldwide movie of 2017. Funny how that works out.


Projected Estimates for the Top Ten (Three-Day)
Projected
Rank
Film
Estimated Gross
1 Maze Runner: The Death Cure 22.7
2 Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle 15.6
3 The Greatest Showman 9.5
4 Hostiles 9.0
5 The Post 8.8
6 12 Strong 7.1
7 Den of Thieves 6.9
8 Paddington 2 5.6
9 The Shape of Water 4.7
10 Padmaavat 4.5

     


 
 

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