Your Weekend Box Office Actuals (01.17.17)
04-Day Holiday Weekend Forecast
Film | Weekend | Opening Weekend | Current Gross | |
Hidden Figures | $27.506 million | $515.499 thousand | $61.889 million | |
Sing | $19.025 million | $35.258 million | $238.240 million | |
La La Land | $17.717 million | $881.104 thousand | $77.299 million | |
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story | $16.806 million | $155.081 million | $501.898 million | |
The Bye Bye Man | $15.204 million | $15.204 million | $15.204 million |
As predicted, Hidden Figures came out ahead at the box office over the holiday weekend but the rest of the results were more unexpected. When I predicted the weekend results, I said only one of the new or expanding films would make it into the top five and I was right — but who could have predicted it would be the poorly reviewed horror film The Bye Bye Man (it has a 27 percent on Rotten Tomatoes) and not the star-studded Patriots Day about the real-life Boston Marathon Bombing that’s been receiving relatively good reviews (it’s at 79 percent)? Except that’s exactly what happened, along with a few other surprises along the way.
Let’s start with the tale of triumph, though. By topping the box office for the second weekend in a row, Hidden Figures has become the first film with multiple female leads since 2011 to remain at number one for more than one weekend. The last film to do this was The Help, which also included Hidden Figures’ Octavia Spencer. There is something frustrating and sad in this story as well — namely the lack of movies with multiple female leads as well as the lack of support for said movies — but it’s important to celebrate Figures’ triumph as well given what it means and represents. The film has nearly made $62 million, more than double its budget, after two weeks in wide release and the way it’s been able to overcome mainstay films as well as new releases is an excellent sign. And as a film about the celebration of three black women, amid the many discussions about diversity in Hollywood, it’s even more exciting that the film is doing as well as it is.
It easy to imagine Rogue One continuing to do well and come in second this past weekend, especially given it was a holiday weekend, but instead it tumbled much further than expected — about $4 million more than expected. With Rogue One’s decent, but not great, performance, it paved the way for both Sing and La La Land to swoop in and take its place. Animated films tend to do well over holiday weekends when kids are out of school and the same can be said for Universal and Illumination’s Sing. It crossed $400 million worldwide and is the fifth-highest grossing Illumination film and hot on the heels of Descpicable Me, which made $251 million domestically when it came out in 2010.
Meanwhile, Oscar-frontrunner La La Land beat Sing in the 3-day results but came short by a little over $1 million to fall in third place overall. Still, its expansion into over 1,800 theaters, including 148 IMAX screens, clearly served it well. It’s more than made up for its $30 million budget, especially as it continues to open in more and more countries. Internationally, the film has made $55 million, bringing its worldwide total to $132.3 million, meaning the film is establishing itself not only as a critical darling and the current lead for Best Picture, but one that’s connecting with and winning over audiences as well. In an industry where awards films can often be inaccessible to larger audiences, the fact that this film is taking on a wider appeal is certainly worth noting.
As mentioned, Rogue One fell short over the last four days. It only dropped a respectable 24 percent, but as it goes when films have been out for so many weeks, even a small drop means the film is bringing in box office numbers in the mid-teens. Still, if it can keep up these numbers and not suffer any major casualities in the next couple of weeks, it should be able to reach that famed $1 billion mark. It’s a little over $980 million right now and with the film still drawing in money from other countries as well, it’s likely Disney will have it’s first $1 billion accomplishment of the year. The real question is: how many more will it have?
Finally, one of the biggest surprises of the weekend was the results from STX’s latest horror venture, The Bye Bye Man. It treads familiar ground for a horror film but audiences made their interests known by bringing in over $15 million for the film. When one considers the success of horror films last year, however, it’s not so surprising. Horror films have a tendency to do well at the box office, surprising or not. The genre occupies a very specific space in the industry, with some audiences genuinely loving the content that horror films can provide, while others watch them for the thrills and adrenaline rush, or even ironically sometimes. Either way, what’s clear is that it’s a dangerous move to underestimate horror films.
This top five also means the rest of the newer films didn’t fare as well. The Mark Wahlberg-led Patriots Day brought in a disappointing $11.6 million, while, in less surprising numbers, Monster Trucks and Sleepless brought in $10.9 million and $8.3 million, respectively. However, none of them did quite as poorly as Ben Affleck’s new film Live by Night, which made a rather sad $5.1 million, coming behind films like Passengers and Underworld: Blood Wars. So much for gangsters.
This weekend several more movies open in wide release, including the Michael Keaton film The Founder, the thriller Split, xXx 3, and the critical darling 20th Century Women. We’ll see if any of them are able to make an impact.
(Source: boxoffice.com, boxofficemojo.com. Figures represent numbers at time of writing, and may have changed.)
Anya Crittenton | Associate Editor