Your Complete Weekend Box Office Tracking, Predictions, & Analysis (01.05.17)

	Rogue One: A Star Wars Story	$27.3 million
	Sing	$25 million
	Hidden Figures	$18.1 million
	Underworld: Blood Wars	$15 million
	La La Land	$9.6 million

A new year, a new box office report. Despite some stiff competition this weekend, repeat contenders Rogue One and Sing should have little trouble remaining on top. In regards to the former, it’s a new Star Wars film. Whether or not it receives good reviews (which it has for the most part), it was always going to earn a massive amount of money simply by the fact that it’s a new Star Wars film. It’s just crossed $450 million domestically and is nearly to $830 million globally. In a couple weeks, it should be able to cross the $1 billion threshold, the first film of 2017 to do so, and a great start to the year for Disney (who had a record-breaking 2016, making $7 billion globally). It’s still far off the totals of The Force Awakens, and while it likely won’t surpass those (or even come close, really), it’s still doing excellent business for being a spinoff film and feature (almost) entirely new characters.

Whether or not this is a sign for another great year at the box office for Disney remains to be seen but given they have the residuals from Rogue One, two new Pixar films coming out (Cars 3 and the original film Coco), two Marvel films (Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 and Thor: Ragnarok), a live-action film (Beauty and the Beast), and another Star Wars film (Episode VIII — this will be the one to watch in comparison to The Force Awakens), there’s a pretty good chance of that.

Universal Pictures

Coming close on the heels of Rogue One this weekend will be the star-studded animated feature Sing, which has been out for two weeks so far and is already close to $200 million domestically and $300 million globally. With a $75 million budget, this is a sure hit for Universal and Illumination. Not quite as much as their other 2016 film, The Secret Life of Pets, which made an impressive $875 million worldwide, but Sing is still doing rather well for itself in its beginning. It should be able to surpass Illumination’s 2012 film Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax and then faces competition from Despicable Me, which made $251.5 million domestically, to become the fourth-highest film for the brand. Still, it’s also contributing to a strong start to 2017 before we enter the January-February box office slump.

	Opening Weekend	Current Gross	Facebook Likes	Tweets
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story	$155.081 million	$451.407 million	5,565	83,644
Sing	$35.258 million	$190.647 million	N/A	N/A
Hidden Figures	$515.499 thousand	$2.872 million	4,192	4,571
Underworld: Blood Wars	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
La La Land	$881.104 thousand	$40.360 million	7,976	13,087

Next up are two new films — well, one film, Hidden Figures, opening in wide release, and another film, Underworld: Blood Wars, making its theater debut. In just 25 theaters, Hidden Figures has managed to make nearly $3 million, so it should have no problem performing well this weekend when it expands into nearly 2,500 theaters. While Fox is predicting a weekend haul of $15-17 million, the excitement for the film should be able to propel it slightly higher, likely between $18 and $20 million (similar to past films such as The Butler and The Help). There is plenty of buzz around this film, both for the Oscars as well as from theater-goers who are enticed by the film’s black female leads, the inspiring true story, and the promise of a feel-good story. On a $25 million budget, this is a great start for the film and should have no problem doing well for itself in the next several weeks as more and more people start to talk about.

Screen Gems

A film that will struggle, however, is the fourth installment in the Underworld franchise, Blood Wars. Coming five years after the last film, Awakening, and a grand total of fourteen years after 2003’s first Underworld film, to say that interest in this franchise has waned is probably true. Not to mention this newest venture into the dark world of vampires and lycans, led by compelling lead Kate Beckinsale, has been receiving terrible reviews (it’s currently at 10 percent on Rotten Tomatoes). Still, this film was made on a modest budget of $35 million and if it brings in its projected $15 million over the weekend and doesn’t fall too much over the next handful of weeks, there’s a chance it could still make a profit. Either way, it’s likely this is the last audiences will see of this world unless it surprises us all with a solid box office intake.

	Rotten Tomatoes			IMDb		Metacritic
	Critics	Users	# of Ratings	Stars	# of Ratings
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story	85	89	71,618	8.1	196,840	65
Sing	69	75	20,153	7.3	11,774	60
Hidden Figures	94	N/A	99	7.2	873	73
Underworld: Blood Wars	10	N/A	20	6.4	6,320	N/A
La La Land	92	89	31,197	8.8	32,777	93

The fifth spot is a slightly open field this weekend, with the main contenders being awards-buzzy musical La La Land and panned sci-fi film Passengers duking it out around the $10 million range. However, the edge will likely go to La La Land given the sheer fact that it’s received such stellar reviews and is a frontrunner for Best Picture. There are more reasons to see La La Land and audiences know that so there’s a good chance it will be best Passengers for the fifth spot.

Focus Features

Also opening wide this weekend is the dark fantasy film A Monster Calls, starring Felicity Jones, Sigourney Weaver, and Liam Neeson as the voice of the monster, among other cast members. Unfortunately, it’s mostly been trounced by competition Stateside (it’s only made $88,791 thousand so far) and that will likely continue to be the trend, despite its generally positive reviews. Where this film will be save is the international box office, where it’s already made$30.2 million. The rest of this weekend’s top ten will be filled out by the likes of Fences and Moana.

(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