Weekend Wrap-Up: Box Office Falls, but Furious Still Fast
April 21, 2015
The top three films all missed expectations this past weekend, which suggests people are starting to become excited about The Avengers: Age of Ultron over anything in theaters at the moment. Furious 7 still won the race on the weekend chart and will top $300 million shortly. Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2's and Unfriended's openings were fine, but nothing more. Overall, the box office fell 8.9% from last weekend down to $120 million. Compared to last year, the box office was 10% lower. Year-to-date, 2015 is still ahead of 2014 with the current margin being 2.3% at just under $3.00 billion to $2.93 billion.
Furious 7 came within a rounding error of expectations earning $29.16 million over the weekend for a total of $294.51 million after three weeks of release. The film will reach $300 million before the weekend and it remains on pace to top American Sniper as the biggest hit of the calendar year of 2015. The latter milestone will depend on how much The Avengers: Age of Ultron will crush it. The studio might want to give it a small push over the top before its run ends.
Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 could not recapture the magic that was Paul Blart. The film's opening weekend was $23.76 million, which is 25% lower than than the first film's opening. Worse still, its reviews are still 0% positive, so its legs will likely be really, really short. It will still top its $38 million production budget and assuming it find even a small audience internationally, it won't cost the studio too much in the end.
Unfriended was well back in third place with $15.85 million over the weekend. The film cost just $1 million to make, while it likely cost less than $15 million to advertise, so the film has probably already matched its combined budget in just three days of release. Its reviews are just over the overall positive level, but horror films rarely have great legs at the box office. If it can get to $30 million, it might break even just on its domestic box office numbers. Even if it doesn't, it will break even during its initial push onto the home market.
Home added $10.61 million over the weekend to its total, which now sits at $142.92 million. This is excellent, especially since many people thought it wouldn't even crack $100 million domestically.
The Longest Ride matched expectations (nearly) perfectly with $7.02 million over the weekend for a ten-day total of $23.68 million. Unless the film is surprisingly strong internationally and on the home market, it will fail to break even.
Monkey Kingdom really struggled earning eighth place with $4.58 million over the weekend for a per theater average of $2,275. Despite earning some of the best reviews of any wide release this year, it failed to find an audience. It is clear that the audience for nature documentaries is not large enough to justify wide releases.
Filed under: Weekend Wrap-up, Home, The Longest Ride, Furious 7, Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2, Monkey Kingdom, Unfriended