Newcomers Will Be No Match for the Magic of “Beauty and the Beast” at the Box Office

	Beauty and the Beast	$88 million
	Power Rangers	$36.5 million
	Life	$17.3 million
	Kong: Skull Island	$14 million
	Logan	$9 million

No amount of action, popular IPs like superheroes and world-saving morphin’ rangers, or fun, charismatic leads in space will be able to knock Beauty and the Beast off its very high throne. In fact, the second place film of the weekend won’t even come close to Beauty and the Beast — instead, it will be $40 to $50 million below the epic Disney musical fantasy. So just how well is Beauty and the Beast doing? Short answer: exceptionally well.

The film became the ninth-fastest movie to reach $100 million and is now the sixth-fastest movie to reach $200 million domestically. By the end of the weekend, it’ll cross $300 million. The big question now is whether or not the film will join the growing list of Disney films to cross $1 billion and given its current pace, that seems likely. Looking at Zootopia, Finding Dory, and Captain America: Civil War, three of the studio’s most recent films to make over $1 billion, it took all of them at least three weekends to reach $300 million domestically whereas it should take Beauty and the Beast only two. This isn’t even touching its global intake, where it currently sits at $461 million, having made $244 million in foreign markets already. Films like this always do better internationally and given the film is still opening in several countries, it should make enough combined with its impressive domestic performance to reach $1 billion.

Walt Disney Pictures

For the studio as a whole, this is a great start to the year, which has four major blockbusters still to open: Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, Thor: Ragnarok, and Star Wars: The Last Jedi. At least one of those, if not more, is bound to hit $1 billion as well. So if you were wondering about Disney’s continued domination of the industry, wonder no more — they’re still the ones to beat.

	Opening Weekend	Current Gross	Facebook Likes	Tweets
Beauty and the Beast	$174.7m	$217.6m	259,886	1,213,849
Power Rangers	N/A	N/A	67,798	156,528
Life	N/A	N/A	94,072	15,441
Kong: Skull Island	$61m	$117.1m	23,390	38,514
Logan	$88.4m	$189.9m	25,684	96,499

And they certainly won’t be beaten by newcomer films Power Rangers and Life. Both films have been largely receiving mixed reviews, from fans and critics alike, with Rangers sitting at a 44 percent on Rotten Tomatoes and Life at 69 percent. Still, it will be Power Rangers that comes out on top of the two, simply because it has more buzz around it, good or not. The movie, based on the campy TV series of the ’90s, which followed a group of teens who are given the ability to “morph” and fight to save the day, has been garnering plenty of attention since it was first announced. While not the first Power Rangers movie to exist, it is the first one to gain any large-scale attraction but the film, which was made for $100 million, hopes to perform at least decently well — if not here, then in other markets. Expected to open in the higher range between $30 and $40 million, it’s not exactly a hopeful start, especially when compared to the openings of recent blockbusters like Beauty and the Beast, Kong, and Logan.

Columbia Pictures

The other new film, Life, is a sci-fi thriller starring the likes of Ryan Reynolds, Jake Gyllenhaal, and Rebecca Ferguson. Despite the impressive cast, decent enough trailers, and compelling marketing campaign that has pushed especially hard this week, it’s not expected to open any higher than $20 million at the most. It’s likely because of the crowded competition the film faces as well as the fact that, while trailers haven’t been bad, there are plenty of comments to be said about the film’s average premise. However, the combination of Reynolds + Gyllenhaal, which has proven to be dynamite in interviews, could help propel this film at least a little higher than expected.

	Rotten Tomatoes		IMDb	Metacritic
	Critics	Users	Stars
Beauty and the Beast	70	86	7.9	65
Power Rangers	44	N/A	7.0	42
Life	69	N/A	7.6	55
Kong: Skull Island	78	75	7.1	62
Logan	92	93	8.5	77

Bringing up the rear will be mainstays Kong: Skull Island and Logan, with the former expected to make just under the $15 million mark, while the latter should make somewhere between $8 and $10 million. The interesting bit about this situation is CHiPs, another new film opening this weekend, is also supposed to open in the same range, making Logan vs CHiPs the only real race at the box office this weekend. Still, given the continued strength of Logan, both financially and critically, it should be able to cling to the top five for one more weekend.

Other films landing in the top ten will be holdovers like Get Out as it nears $150 million domestically, The Shack, The Belko Experiment, and The LEGO Batman Movie.

(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