Friday Box Office Analysis

By Kim Hollis

January 12, 2019

Tickle tickle.

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This weekend will bring us the first ever number one movie at the box office for STX Entertainment. Along with that, we've got another movie about a dog loving its people, an expansion for a biopic of Ruth Bader Ginsberg, and a Keanu Reeves movie that no one has ever heard of and will never hear of again after the weekend.

We'll start with that number one film. The Upside, starring Bryan Cranston and Kevin Hart in an Americanize remake of the French film The Intouchables, earned just a smidge under $7 million yesterday. Despite being critically reviled for the most part (39 percent fresh at Rotten Tomatoes), audiences seem to like it well enough as it came in with an A Cinemascore. Cranston has a lot of goodwill these days, and even with Kevin Hart's recent bad publicity after withdrawing as Oscar host, he's a draw in the right kind of film. That $7 million total for Friday should translate to around $18.8 million and a solid, solid showing. Since the budget was just $38 million, it's going to do just fine once home movie revenue is added in.

I'm pretty sure I saw the entire plot for A Dog's Way Home within its trailer, but it's still the sort of movie that pet lovers embrace. (Note: I always check the website Does the Dog Die? just to be sure that I'm not going to be utterly decimated by a film.) A Dog's Way Home earned $3.3 million yesterday and is headed toward a weekend total of $9.2 million. It's the kind of harmless entertainment that is appropriate for a cold January day.




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Ruth Bader Ginsberg is free from cancer after her recent surgery (may we all rejoice). She's one of the more noteworthy Supreme Court justices for the reason that she's a current liberal voice of dissent but also 85-years-old. The biopic based on her story, On the Basis of Sex, expanded from 112 to 1,923 venues yesterday and earned $2.1 million. Nothing wrong with that! Let's call it about $6 million for the weekend, pretty solid given its small $20 million budget. I'd expect Felicity Jones to at least be in the conversation for a Best Actress Oscar, though she's of course not the favorite.

Our final new release of the weekend is the Keanu Reeves sci-fi thriller Replicas. You might not have heard of the film, though I've weirdly seen plenty of ads for it on TV. Anyway, it's only 12 percent fresh at Rotten Tomatoes and audiences give it a C over at Cinemascore, so there's no reason to think it will become a cult classic or anything. It made $950,000 yesterday and won't even crack the $3 million mark, I don't believe.


     


 
 

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