What did you see this weekend?
Sunday, February 11, 2018 at 8:51PM
NATHANIEL R in Fifty Shades Freed, Oscars (17), The 15:17 to Paris, box office, short films

by Nathaniel R

Weekend Box Office (Feb 9th-11th)
W I D E
800+ screens
L I M I T E D
excluding prev. wide
1. 🔺 Fifty Shades Freed $38.8 NEW REVIEW
1. 🔺 La Boda de Valentina $1.1 on 331 screens NEW 
2. 🔺 Peter Rabbit $25 NEW 2. 🔺 Pad Man  $760k on 152 screens NEW
3. 🔺 The 15:17 To Paris $12.6  NEW
3. 🔺 Oscar Nominated Short Films $615k on 180 screens NEW
4. Jumanji $9.8 (cum. $365.6)
4. 🔺  A Fantastic Woman $121k on 20 screens (cum. $232k) CAPSULE | REVIEW
5. The Greatest Showman $6.4 (cum. $146.5) REVIEW | ANOTHER HIT MUSICAL 
5. ðŸ”º The Insult $109k on 50 screens (cum. $454k)  

 

Fifty Shades Freed  continued its franchise's box office power by opening at #1 again. This weekend's bow also brought the franchise's total box office haul over the billion dollar mark. That's a lot of green for something barely blue...

Peter Rabbit opened well (why? Gah it looks atrocious and the animation looks terrifying) but Clint Eastwood's true story thriller underperformed.

Meanwhile at the arthouses the Oscar short films continued to show strong appeal -- it's such a great tradition that they release them each year now in package form.

In other Oscar box office news, the foreign film nominees The Insult and A Fantastic Woman continue to perform well, essentially winning the lottery of that game distributors play everywhere where they delay the release until around Oscar time and hope for the nomination to serve as free advertising. Yes, that tactic works IF you get nominated. Russia's Loveless will try to make it three for three next week. If not it hurts the film -- In The Fade (Germany) and Happy Ending  (Austria) did solid business over the past month and a half (both opening just days before the new year but they've only managed around $200k in that length of time. Without the Oscar attention they didn't catch on in the way they might have with it, or the way they might have by opening earlier given their marketable famous names (Kruger and Huppert/Haneke, respectively).

6. Maze Runner Death Cure $6 (cum. $49)  REVIEW | WOMEN OF THE POST 6. Bilal A New Breed of Hero $64k on 90 screens (cum. $449k) 
7. Winchester $5 (cum. $17.1) 7. 🔺  Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool $58k on 39 screens (cum. $394k) INTERVIEW
8. The Post $3.5 (cum. $72.8) REVIEW | WOMEN OF THE POST
8. 🔺  Bomb City $31k on 17 screens NEW REVIEW | DOC NOMINEE
9. The Shape of Water $3 (cum. $49.7)  CAPSULE | MUSIC | SCREENPLAY | DESIGN 9. Faces Places  $21k on 13 screens (cum. $810k) REVIEW | DOC NOMINEE
10. Den of Thieves $2.8 (cum. $40.9)  10. 🔺  Golden Exits $12k on 1 screen NEW

🔺 = new or expanding its theater count

numbers (in millions unless otherwise noted) from box office mojo 

 

Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool is having similar problems. It's doing decent business for how little attention it's getting, indicating that it probably had an eager audience given the stars, subject matter, and quality. But much of its target audience was too busy with actual Oscar contenders to find it in the crowded marketplace.

What did you see this weekend?

Article originally appeared on The Film Experience (http://thefilmexperience.net/).
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