Friday Estimates: Rogue One and Sing Hold a High Note with $18.18 million and $16.8 million
December 31, 2016
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and Sing continue to dominate the box office, which is great news for us, as Disney and Universal are practically the only major studios releasing numbers this weekend. The holidays are incredibly important at the box office, but they also make our job harder to do. As for the actual box office numbers, Rogue One led the way with $18.18 million on Friday for an 15-day total of $393.55 million. This is lower than expected and it will fall week-to-week; however, it will finish the three-day weekend with just over $50 million becoming the third film released in 2016 to get to $400 million domestically in the process. It also remained on pace for $500 million domestically and $1 billion worldwide.
Sing earned $16.8 million on Friday and is on its way to a $42 million weekend. Again, this is a little lower than expected, but not enough to be worried. The film has $140 million after Friday’s box office and will have just over $165 million by the end of business on Sunday. That puts it on pace to crack $200 million in January. It won’t make enough money to break even just on its domestic numbers, but it will break even before the home market.
We are stuck with second hand estimates for Passengers, but if they are correct and the film earned $5.6 million on Friday, then it will be beating our expectations. This is great news for Sony who have had a terrible year and can’t afford another massive failure. The film will earn about $15 million this weekend and that will give it about $60 million after two weeks of release. If it can get past $200 million worldwide, it could break even... eventually. Even if it just comes close, it will be better than a lot of its other films the studio has released this year.
Moana actually returned to the top five with $4.33 million on Friday, putting it on pace to hit $11 million over the weekend. The film also hit $200 million domestically, becoming the 12th film released in 2016 to do so. It won’t be the last. Add in the film’s international numbers and it has already made enough to cover its entire $150 million production budget and should break even well before its home market debut.
Fences was next with $3.43 million on Friday, giving it a running tally of $23.13 million. This is the first full weekend the film has been in wide release, so we can’t compare this Friday to last Friday making it harder to predict its weekend numbers. That said, this suggest a $10 million weekend, more or less.
Filed under: Friday Estimates, Passengers, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Sing, Fences