Your Complete Weekend Box Office Tracking, Predictions, & Analysis (03.05.15)

by: Madelyn Glymour | Contributor

	CHAPPIE	$18 million
	FOCUS	$10 million
	THE SECOND BEST EXOTIC MARIGOLD HOTEL	$9 million
	KINGSMAN: THE SECRET SERVICE	$8 million
	THE SPONGEBOB MOVIE: SPONGE OUT OF WATER	$7 million

It’s another low-grossing weekend this time, with three new releases — Chappie, The Second Best Marigold Hotel, and Unfinished Business — only one of which is poised to make much impact. Chappie, the latest offering from District 9 director Neill Blomkamp, has a certain amount of excitement and awareness, and is set to make somewhere between $15 and $20 million, depending on whom you ask. That should be more than enough to earn it the top spot. On the other end of the spectrum, Unfinished Business, with its low awareness, likely won’t even break into the top five.

The second week of Focus should do fine, but not spectacularly; there’s not a ton of buzz from the opening, but neither does it seem to be hated. It should drop in the 50 percent range, as stragglers who didn’t go to the movies last week check it out.

	Opening Weekend	Current Gross	Facebook Likes	Tweets
CHAPPIE	N/A	N$	261,445	28,542
FOCUS	$18.685 million	$23.35 million	227,863	85,376
THE SECOND BEST EXOTIC MARIGOLD HOTEL	N/A	N/A	98,990	–
KINGSMAN: THE SECRET SERVICE	$36.206 million	$88.826 million	392,365	123,579
THE SPONGEBOB MOVIE: SPONGE OUT OF WATER	$55.365 million	$141.505 million	774,066	14,230

The Second Best Marigold Hotel is the sequel to a film that more than sextupled its budget, even if you factor in marketing. But the original Hotel only took in $6 million in its opening weekend, and the sequel, which is only set to bow in 1,300 theaters, probably won’t do much better. Like its predecessor, it may do very well long-term, but its individual weekend numbers should be unremarkable.

Finally, Kingsman and Spongebob, in their fourth and fifth weekends respectably, should see modest drops that will put them in the single digits — but should be enough for them to hold out over the fourth week of Fifty Shades of Grey, which should finally fall from the top five.

	Rotten Tomatoes			IMDb		Metacritic
	Critics	Users	# of Ratings	Stars	# of Ratings
CHAPPIE	35	N/A	23,505	7.9	1,231	41
FOCUS	55	62	24,698	7.0	7,675	56
THE SECOND BEST EXOTIC MARIGOLD HOTEL	65	N/A	5,731	7.0	755	52
KINGSMAN: THE SECRET SERVICE	74	88	79,858	8.2	67,099	59
THE SPONGEBOB MOVIE: SPONGE OUT OF WATER	75	61	31,923	6.6	8,258	63

(Sources: boxoffice.com, rottentomatoes.com, imdb.com, metacritic.com. Starred figures are estimates. Tweets 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.)