Weekend Estimates: Zootopia Starts March with $73.7 Million

March 6, 2016

Zootopia

Buoyed by excellent reviews and limited competition, Zootopia will launch this weekend to a huge $73.7 million, the fourth-best weekend in March and best-ever weekend for Walt Disney Animation Studios, ahead of Frozen’s second weekend back in 2013. With a 93% favorability score among audiences, and an A CinemaScore, the film should enjoy long legs going into the Easter season. Aside from The Little Prince (which is expected to open in limited release), Zootopia doesn’t have much competition from other family films until The Jungle Book opens on April 15. It’s already shaping up to be another good year at the box office for Disney.

In second place, London Has Fallen will post $21.7 million. That’s not a bad figure for this time of year, but down from the $30 million earned by Olympus Has Fallen on its first weekend, and well short of what’s required from a film that cost $105 million to make. The goal with the sequel has obviously been to widen its international appeal, but the film has a long way to go.

Also disappointing on debut this weekend is Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, another foreign-politics fish-out-of-water black comedy that has failed to connect with audiences (see Rock the Kasbah and Our Brand is Crisis for other recent examples). Reviews are key to films like this, and 59%-positive critics reviews on Rotten Tomatoes probably says all you need to know about this one.

In not-exactly-limited/not-exactly-wide release this weekend, The Other Side of the Door will open with around $1.2 million from 546 theaters. It’s an unusual release strategy for a film like this, and one that clearly hasn’t entirely worked out. With the young adult market fragmenting between theatrical, physical disk and increasingly VOD/EST, it makes sense for studios to experiment with different release strategies, and we will probably see more of this kind of thing in the next year or two.

In true limited release, Knight of Cups is enjoying the best theater average (excluding Zootopia). Terrence Malick’s latest is a bit of a miss with critics and audiences alike, with 47% favorable from critics and 41% from audiences at Rotten Tomatoes. Malick has a very erratic record at the box office recently, with The Tree of Life clocking in at $13.3 million domestically, and To the Wonder managing only $585,000. Knight of Cups seems likely to fall closer to the low end of that spectrum.

- Weekend estimates
- Record weekends in March
- Zootopia comparisons
- London Has Fallen comparisons
- Whiskey Tango Foxtrot comparisons
- Deadpool comparisons

Bruce Nash,

Filed under: Weekend Estimates, Knight of Cups, London Has Fallen, Zootopia, The Little Prince, The Other Side of the Door, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, Terrence Malick