Box Office: ‘Baby’ Got Back at #1

Drew Dietsch
Movies
Movies

The box office looked pretty similar to last weekend with The Boss Baby repeating at the number one spot. Beauty and the Beast also reclaimed second place and is inching its way close to $1 billion worldwide. It’ll be the first film of 2017 to hit that benchmark.

However, it was a sad time for the newcomers. Smurfs: The Lost Village couldn’t even break $15 million. That is not a good sign for a movie aimed at kids (read: the easiest target audience to capture). Expect those little cerulean monsters to go into hibernation for a while. Going in Style performed better than most had expected but will probably fall by the wayside in a week. And The Case for Christ? That did about the same most faith-based movies do. All in all, a pretty humdrum weekend for the new releases.

The Numbers Game

Each week, I will guess how much wide-release films will be making on their opening weekend. My estimates come from my heart and my gut. You’d think I’d use my brain, but that makes far too much sense.

Last Week:

Smurfs: The Lost Village
My Guess: $26,000,000
Actual: $14,015,000
Result: I clearly overestimated how much people like those blue forest creatures.

Going in Style
My Guess: $20,000,000
Actual: $12,500,000
Result: I went high with all my guesses. Time to be more pessimistic!

The Case for Christ
My Guess: $5,000,000
Actual: $3,900,000
Result: At least I was a little closer to this one.

This week:

The Fate of the Furious

fast and furious 8 fate of the furious review feature hero

Everyone is giving this entry a wide, wide berth. These movies always perform big and this one looks to be even bigger than usual. The calendar isn’t offering any real competition until Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, and that’s three weeks later! With that kind of domination, this could be one of the biggest movies of the year.

But for an opening weekend? It will definitely top $100 million but how much higher can it get? Furious 7 opened on ~4,000 screens and its first weekend brought in $147 million. This is getting released on at least 200 more screens and is something of an enormous appetizer for the summer blockbuster season. It’s also a part of a series that defies the law of diminishing returns. In fact, each film from the fourth entry onwards has opened even bigger than its predecessor. I’m predicting that the trend continues but not in an enormous way. This one will open big and loud but might be the tipping point for the franchise.

My guess: $150,000,000

See you next week, box office buddies!

Source: Box Office Mojo

Drew Dietsch
Drew Dietsch has been professionally writing about entertainment for over a decade. His bylines include FANDOM - where he was a founding contributor and Entertainment Editor - Bloody Disgusting, SYFY WIRE, and more. He created and hosts GenreVision, a weekly film discussion show at genrevision.com.