Weekend Estimates: Angry Birds Win Civil War with $39 Million Debut

May 22, 2016

The Angry Birds Movie

The Angry Birds Movie is performing at the top end of expectations this weekend, and will top the box office chart with a commendable $39 million. While that’s a long way behind the $75.1 million earned by Zootopia on its opening weekend back in March, it’s a very respectable figure, and gives Sony the increasingly-rare bragging rights over Disney this weekend, with Captain America: Civil War dropping to second place with $33.1 million.

Angry Birds is doing good business internationally as well, with $111 million earned to date for a worldwide total of $150 million. All in all, that points towards the film being profitable overall, but not by a huge margin, on a budget of $73 million. Whether it has the legs to be profitable enough to warrant a sequel is something that time will tell, but Sony is in bad enough need of a franchise, and co-producer Rovio Animation obviously has a vested interest in producing more films, if only to keep the brand in front of consumers, that a sequel seems very likely.

Disney has no problem in deciding whether to continue the Captain America/Marvel brand of course, but Civil War is performing fairly weakly on a week-to-week basis. After debuting with the 5th-biggest weekend in history, its third outing will be only the 21st-best 3rd weekend. The film has $347.4 million in the bank as of Sunday, making it the second-highest grossing film domestically this year. Curiously, five films have grossed between $325 million and $365 million in North America this year so far, but none have done better than that. Civil War should top Deadpool’s $362.7 million soon to becoming the top film domestically, but it’s going to fall short of $400 million. The studios (Disney in particular) seem to be very good at reaching their target audience these days, but finding a broader audience is looking like more of a problem (unless your movie is set in a galaxy far, far away or puts dinosaurs in a theme park).

Those five movies have also racked up impressive numbers overseas, and Civil War has become the first film of 2016 to earn over $1 billion worldwide. Zootopia is on the verge of doing the same, with a domestic total of $334 million and international earnings of $647 million so far.

Back home, two other wide releases are doing solid business this week. Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising will earn a slightly disappointing $21.8 million, well behind the $49 million first weekend enjoyed by the first film in the franchise. The Nice Guys, meanwhile, will post an $11.27 million debut from 2,865 theaters, for an average of $3,934. That’s OK for Summer counter-programming, but disappointing for a film that has been a hit with critics. Maybe good word of mouth can help it stick around for a while.

Three films stand out in limited release this weekend. Documentary Weiner will earn around $85,000 from just five locations this weekend; Maggie’s Plan is set for $67,000 or thereabouts, also from five venues; and Ma Ma is expected to earn around $9,500 from one theater. Of the three, Maggie’s Plan has the best long-term prospects for at least a solid expansion and decent business over the next couple of months.

Other noteworthy limited releases in there second weekend are Love & Friendship, with $582,000 from 47 theaters and The Lobster, with $408,000 from 24.

- Weekend estimates
- Biggest 3rd weekends
- Top 2016 movies at the global box office

- The Angry Birds Movie Comparisons
- Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising Comparisons
- The Nice Guys Comparisons
- Captain America: Civil War comparisons
- The Jungle Book vs. Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice

Bruce Nash,

Filed under: Weekend Estimates, The Angry Birds Movie, Captain America: Civil War, Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising, The Nice Guys, Zootopia, Love & Friendship, The Lobster, Maggie’s Plan, Ma Ma, Weiner, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Captain America