Weekend Wrap-Up: Batman v Superman: Boom v Bust at $166.01 million

March 28, 2016

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice

As expected, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice dominated the box office earning $166.01 million over the weekend. However, this is lower than anticipated and lower than Saturday's calculation or Sunday's estimates. (Our model turned out to be closer.) Most of the rest of the films in the top five had reason to be happy, as did the overall box office, which was an amazing $252 million. This is 92% higher than last weekend and 68% more than this weekend last year. This kind of year-over-year growth usually only happens when there's a misalignment in holidays, which is exactly what happened this weekend. Last year, Easter didn't happen until April 5th. Year-to-date, 2016 doubled its lead over 2015 at $2.63 billion to $2.27 billion. A $370 million, 16% lead is certainly impressive, but I suspect it will shrink dramatically next month. Hopefully it isn't completely gone by May.

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice opened with $166.01 million over the weekend, despite earning 29% positive reviews. This is lower than was predicted and lower than was estimated on Sunday. It also showed a disastrous fall on the daily chart down 59% from Friday to Sunday. Ouch. The word of mouth is killing this movie. To put this into perspective, BvS's Thursday night previews were just 0.4% lower than those for Age of Ultron. Its opening day was 3.4% lower. By Sunday, the film's were 33% apart on the daily chart. It is still a little too soon to tell where this film will end up, but there's a very real chance it won't surpass Deadpool on the yearly chart. It will still be profitable, but the studio should be concerned about long-term plans.

Zootopia landed in second place with $24.02 million over the weekend for a total of $241.43 million. The film's final target is $300 million and that should be attainable, especially since there's not a lot of direct competition coming up.

My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 opened in third place with a healthy $17.86 million. This is almost exactly what it cost to make, so the studio should be happy with that result. On the downside, the reviews are terrible so its legs might not be great. That said, they won't have to be great for the film to break even early in its home market run.

Miracles from Heaven slipped a spot to fourth with $9.69 million over the weekend for a 12-day total of $34.30 million. It will have no trouble getting past $50 million domestically, which is enough to be a midlevel hit.

Allegiant fell a little faster than expected to down 67% to just $9.44 million over the weekend for a total of $46.54 million after ten days of release. Its total so far is still less than the previous film's opening weekend. In fact, Insurgent didn't fall below $10 million till its fourth weekend of release.

There's one film in the sophomore class, but I don't want to talk about it, because it did so poorly that it feels mean to bring it up. The Bronze fell 92% to just $29,000 over the weekend for a two-week total of $601,000. Granted, its reviews are not good, but they are not that bad either.

- Weekend Box Office

- Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice comparisons
- My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 comparisons

Filed under: Weekend Wrap-up, Deadpool, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, The Divergent Series: Allegiant, Zootopia, My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2, The Bronze, Miracles from Heaven, DC Extended Universe