It Will Be Mutants vs. Giant Apes at the Box Office This Weekend with “Logan” Poised to Emerge Victorious
0
Logan |
$48 million |
|
Kong: Skull Island |
$46 million |
|
Get Out |
$20.4 million |
|
The Shack |
$9.7 million |
|
The LEGO Batman Movie |
$7 million |
The second weekend of March sees one of the first epic box office showdowns of the year: Logan vs. Kong: Skull Island. That’s right, it’s clawed and telepathic mutants facing off against giant apes in a jungle decidedly similar to Apocalypse Now and the Vietnam War. So who will win? Both films are projected to open in the same realm, but excellent word-of-mouth and a very strong critical reception should keep Logan on top for at least one more week.
In the past, X-Men films have dropped anywhere from 53 to 67 percent from the first to second weekends, but Logan is performing remarkably well (far superior to where predictions had it) and all the buzz around it should continue to propel it forward. A decent drop of 50 percent would have it around the $44 million mark, but there’s no reason to think it won’t continue to supersede expectations. This is a film fans will want to see more than once and even if its audience overlaps with Kong: Skull Island, Logan shouldn’t suffer too much in its second weekend. In less than two week, Logan is already over $100 million domestically and after this weekend, it should jump past at least The Wolverine and X-Men: First Class to become the eighth-highest-grossing X-Men film. If it does particularly well, it could even surpass X-Men: Apocalypse in just two weekends. However, Logan represents a marathon, not a sprint, and all eyes will be on it to see if it can join the highest ranks of X-Men films like Deadpool ($363 million) and X-Men: The Last Stand and X-Men: Days of Future Past (the $233 million range).
Continuing in the realm of science-fiction and action comes the latest iteration of King Kong, Kong: Skull Island. A familiar mythology and an all-star cast consisting of Brie Larson, Tom Hiddleston, Samuel L. Jackson, and John Goodman, the film will draw in good-sized crowds. However, a hit-or-miss marketing campaign, and the competition from Logan, will keep the film from reaching the opening weekend heights of 2014’s Godzilla, which opened to $93 million. What’s the tie between these two films besides their focus on giant monsters? Well, Warner Bros. is planning a massive shared universe between the two films and there’s even a stinger in this new Kong film hinting at the fact. There’s an undeniable audience for this franchise and this movie but unfortunately, it simply isn’t poised to perform as well.
Opening Weekend | Current Gross | Facebook Likes | Tweets | |
Logan | $88.4m | $109.8m | 217,622 | 556,611 |
Kong: Skull Island | N/A | N/A | 506,524 | 96,479 |
Get Out | $33.3m | $87.3m | 34,286 | 317,718 |
The Shack | $16.1m | $20.9m | 33,825 | N/A |
The LEGO Batman Movie | $53m | $150.6m | N/A | N/A |
The rest of the weekend is less of a battle and more of holdover films continuing their streak of successful performances. After two weekends of great numbers, showing droves of people continuing to see Jordan Peele’s new horror film Get Out, the film is set to continue to do just that once more. After dropping only 15 percent from its first to its second weekend, it’s set to once more drop only $8 million or so, far less than a film’s average drop of 50 percent or so. With a $20 million intake, the film, currently at $87 million, will cross the $100 million domestic mark, making it one of the year’s most successful films, especially in terms of profits given its $4.5 million budget. What this absolutely shows is that the future of Peele’s filmmaking career is definitely highly anticipated.
Next up is the faith-based movie The Shack, which performed surprisingly well last weekend, likely because of the film’s star power (namely Octavia Spencer). It should drop a little less than 50 percent, bringing in the same audiences as it did in its premiere weekend, before it gets knocked off the top five entirely. According to Box Office Mojo, it’s the 17th highest Christian film domestically — with a $10 million intake this weekend, it should be able to near the top ten, so while it’s not set to do especially well in the overall, in its genre it should prove to be one of the better performing films.
|
|
|
||
Rotten Tomatoes | IMDb | Metacritic | ||
Critics | Users | Stars | ||
Logan | 92 | 94 | 8.7 | 77 |
Kong: Skull Island | 79 | N/A | 7.4 | 63 |
Get Out | 99 | 89 | 8.3 | 83 |
The Shack | 19 | 86 | 6.8 | 31 |
The LEGO Batman Movie | 91 | 84 | 7.7 | 75 |
Finally, Warner Bros. Animation’s The LEGO Batman Movie will drop below the $10 million mark this weekend, as it comes to its slow drop out of the top five. It’s not looking likely that the film will be able to break $200 million domestically as its predecessor did, but it’s still the number one film of 2017 so far (surely to be surpassed by Logan and other films that will eventually come out, such as this month’s Beauty and the Beast, but the point still stands).
And as per usual, the rest of the top ten will consist of mainstays like Fifty Shades Darker and Hidden Figures.
(Sources: boxoffice.com, boxofficemojo.com, rottentomatoes.com, imdb.com, metacritic.com. Tweets and Likes represent figures for this week only. Figures represent numbers at time of writing, and may have changed. Tracking Board does not report Rotten Tomatoes user ratings for movies that have not yet seen wide release.)
Anya Crittenton | Associate Editor