“Kong: Skull Island” Stomps Its Way to the Top of the Box Office and “Get Out” Becomes Fastest Blumhouse Film to Reach $100 million
0Film | Weekend | Opening Weekend | Current Gross | |
Kong: Skull Island | $61m | $61m | $61m | |
Logan | $38.1m | $88.4m | $152.9m | |
Get Out | $20.7m | $33.3m | $110.7m | |
The Shack | $10m | $16.1m | $32.2m | |
The LEGO Batman Movie | $7.6m | $53m | $158.8m |
For the second weekend in a row, our estimates for the weekend’s top film were drastically off, showing the way that blockbusters based on existing IPs still dominate, even with an arguably weak marketing push, and that the year’s slow start is starting to wane. The weekend is down slightly from last weekend, about 12 percent, mostly thanks to the strong performances by Logan and Get Out last weekend, but the weekend is up year-to-date. In 2016, the tenth weekend of the year wasn’t able to crack $150 million — this past weekend was.
The latest blockbuster, Kong: Skull Island, was not able to top Logan‘s massive opening last week or its brethren film Godzilla, which opened to $93 million in 2014. Still, Kong won the weekend quite clearly and opened well over $10 million than expected. Worldwide, it’s nearly to $150 million, which is still short of making a profit on its $185 million budget, but it’s off to a good start and over the next few weeks, should be able to make a nice return on investment for itself. For comparison’s sake, it opened over $11 million more than Peter Jackson’s 2005 King Kong movie, which went on to make $218 million total domestically, so it will be interesting to see if this round can do the same. Given its marketing campaign has been less than impressive, word of mouth and good reviews (it’s currently at 79 percent on Rotten Tomatoes) are likely what propelled this movie to its top spot.
However, perhaps more surprising than Kong‘s domination is Logan‘s fall. $38 million is nothing to laugh at, nor the fact that the film is already over $150 million in two weeks, but a 57 percent drop-off is far more than expected. Logan has been receiving rave reviews from critics and fans alike as one of the best superhero films of all time. There’s no lack of enthusiasm about this film, which is why its drop is somewhat surprising. Most blockbusters tend to drop over 50 percent from their first to their second weekends, especially with new blockbusters opening seemingly every week to challenge them, but Logan seem poised to buck that trend based — until it didn’t. The film is now at $437 million worldwide and the eighth highest film in X-Men film so it’s still, far and away, a massive success.
The rest of the weekend played out exactly as expected. With a near $21 million third weekend, Get Out dropped only 25 percent, continuing the film’s mass success. It has become the second-highest grossing film for Blumhouse Productions (currently $25 million behind the film in first place, Split, meaning there’s a good chance Get Out will overcome it take the number one spot) and the fastest Blumhouse film to reach the $100 million mark. Get Out is nearly to $111 million domestically and just a little reminder — this film was only made for $4.5 million. Does this movie continue to be one of the most successful of the year? Absolutely.
Bringing up the rear is the faith-based film The Shack and the animated superhero film The LEGO Batman Movie. The latter is now close to $160 million, which is about $100 million less than its predecessor. And as predicted, The Shack moved up in the ranks of Christian movies and is now the fifteenth highest grossing religious film. With about $10 million more, it could crack the top ten and in the next few weeks, it might very well do that.
The rest of the top ten consisted of holdovers from past weeks. This weekend, we’ll likely see the biggest opening of 2017 so far as Disney’s highly anticipated live-action Beauty and the Beast film opens in over 4,000 theaters. Elsewhere, the thriller-horror film The Belko Experiment, which has earned solid reviews on the festival circuit, opens in 1,350 theaters.
(Source: boxoffice.com, boxofficemojo.com. Figures represent numbers at time of writing, and may have changed.)
Anya Crittenton | Associate Editor