by Nathaniel R
| Holiday Weekend Box Office (Feb 15th-18th) Estimates |
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| W I D E 800+ screens |
L I M I T E D excluding prev. wide |
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| 1.🔺 Black Panther (pictured) $235 NEW PODCAST |
1. 🔺 Detective Chinatown 2 (pictured) $862k on 115 screens NEW |
| 2. Peter Rabbit $23.1 (cum. $54) | 2. The Oscar Nominated Short Films $780k on 272 screens (cum. $1.8) |
| 3. Fifty Shades Freed $19.4 (cum. $78.6) REVIEW |
3. La Boda de Valentina $642k on 331 screens (cum. $2.1) |
| 4. Jumanji $10 (cum. $379.6) |
4. Pad Man $435k on 152 screens (cum. $1.4) |
| 5. The 15:17 to Paris $9.1 (cum. $26.8) REVIEW |
5. 🔺 Monster Hunt 2 $401k on 69 screens NEW |
Black Panther just had a record-smashing holiday weekend. It's the biggest President's Day Weekend haul of all time and the 5th biggest opening ever. And in a single weekend (even if you don't count the holiday) it became 2018's biggest hit. That's thus far of course. Three dependably behemoth franchises that, like Black Panther, will have no trouble whatsoever raking up their first 1/2 billion globally (even if people don't love them) are still to come. We're talking Solo: A Star Wars Story, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, and Avengers: Infinity War which could threaten King T'Challa for #1 of the year dominance.
But at least until the summer movie season begins "Wakanda Forever!" is the rallying cry for moviegoers, so there wasn't much talk of anything else...
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| 6. The Greatest Showman $6.2 (cum. $155.6) REVIEW | ANOTHER HIT MUSICAL | 6. 🔺 Film Stars Don't Die $124k* (cum. ) INTERVIEW |
| 7. Early Man (pictured) $4.2 NEW | 7. The Insult $104k on 43 screens (cum. $584k) OSCAR NOM |
| 8. Maze Runner The Death Cure $3.1 (cum. $54.6) |
8. 🔺 A Fantastic Woman $86k* on 29 screens (cum. $360k) REVIEW | OSCAR NOM |
| 9. Winchester $2.6 (cum. $22.2) | 9. 🔺 Double Lover (pictured) $75k* on 48 screens NEW INTERVIEW |
| 10. The Post $2.4 (cum. $77) REVIEW | BEST PICTURE | 10. 🔺 The Party $36k* on 3 screens NEW |
| 🔺 = new or expanding its theater count * numbers are from the 3 day weekend - will be more numbers (in millions unless otherwise noted) from box office mojo |
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So at the box office it was essentially more of the same with Jumanji and The Greatest Showman refusing to give up theaters week after week still dropping only 20% a week when the norm is closer to 50% weekly (they're now the 5th and 20th biggest domestic grossers of 2017 and still earning millions every week). All the Oscar films continue to fall inbetween the top ten and the limited releases but they all lost a lot of screens this weekend with Black Panther needing 4,000+ of them; they'll be running on fumes by Oscar night.
Two new wide releases were brave enough to play opposite Black Panther but they suffered for it. The Biblical action film Samson didn't hit the top ten with just under $2 million. And with Early Man, the beloved Aardman team experienced their weakest opening ever.
At the arthouses François Ozon's erotic thriller Double Lover and the Russian Oscar nominee Loveless (just outside the limited release top ten) failed to really cause a stir in their debut weekends but we'll see what word of mouth will do for them next week as both films are quite discussable.
What did you see during the holiday weekend? (I mean, besides Black Panther)