If you believe that success for one movie inspires greenlit for similar movies, than now is the time for filmmakers to pitch movies with black female leads and new movie musicals! Both Hidden Figures and La La Land are shaping up to be giant hits. And that's before Oscar nominations give them another boost. Hidden Figures fell only 10% in its second wide weekend which is non-existent as drops go, indicating amazing word of mouth and potentially very long legs with audiences. Meanwhile La La Land should be at $100 million in no time. Question: how many musical hits do there need to be exactly before Hollywood gets that people like them? Chicago, Dreamgirls, Hairspray, Les Miz all grossed over $100 million stateside in the past 15 years and still people act like "oh, musicals. dead genre. nobody will go see them!"...
In other happy news Elle and Moonlight received a jolt of new interest from their Globe wins and added quite a lot of new screens despite having been losing them for weeks. In unhappy news (if you like the pictures) Ben Affleck's Live by Night failed to find an audience in wide release (missing the top ten) and the hard-sell of Martin Scorsese's Silence is struggling, too at just under 800 screens.
TOP WIDE
(over 800 screens)
01 Hidden Figures $20.4 (cum. $54.8) Podcast
02 La La Land $14.5 (cum. $74) Reviewish, Demy Influence, and How Rare It Is!
03 Sing $13.8 (cum. $233)
04 Rogue One $13.7 (cum. $498.8) Review
05 The Bye Bye Man $13.3 NEW
TOP LIMITED
(under 800 screens - excluding wide releases losing screens)
01 Lion $2.2 (cum. $13.2) 575 screens Review and Nicole Kidman Chat
02 Silence $1.9 (cum. $3) 747 screens Trailer Discussion
03 Moonlight $1.1 (cum. $14.6) 582 screens Review and Podcast
04 Jackie $715K (cum. $10.4) 353 screens Review and Interview
05 Elle $314K (cum. $1.3) 209 screens Review and Isabelle's e-mails
Four of those five made Nathaniel's top 20 list
What did you see this weekend?