Friday Estimates: Emoji Earns $10.05 million in Emotional Start

July 29, 2017

The Emoji Movie

The weekend got off to a strange start with The Emoji Movie earning first place on Friday with $10.05 million. That’s the good news. The bad news is in the future. Not only is the film’s Tomatometer Score just 6% positive, not only are the critics aggressive in their negative reviews, but the film only managed a B from CinemaScore. Family films rarely earn less than a A minus from CinemaScore, so this will be devastating for its legs. That said, a $10.05 million start is still impressive and a second place, $28 million debut is enough that it will break even early in its home market run.

Because the competition was weaker than expected, Dunkirk was able to earn second place on Friday with $8 million. This is a 60% decline from its opening Friday, but it will bounce back on Saturday to earn between $27 million and $28 million over the weekend. This will be enough to push it over $100 million after just ten days of release. There’s no way the studio isn’t happy with that.

Atomic Blonde missed expectations with just $7.1 million on Friday, and Universal is estimating $18.3 million over the full weekend. This is weaker than predicted, but better than Thursday Previews indicated, so perhaps this is a good omen. Its reviews are 74% positive, but it only earned a B from CinemaScore, which indicates weaker legs. There’s not a lot of competition in August and this could help its trailing edge, putting it past $50 million domestically. That should be enough to break even sometime during the film’s initial push onto the home market.

Girls Trip wasn’t that far behind, with $6.2 million putting it on pace for $19 million over the weekend. Its decline is so shallow that it has a shot at $100 million domestically, which is more than enough to get more films like this greenlit. And if these new films earn equally positive reviews, then I will be happy to see them.

Friday Box Office Chart

- Atomic Blonde Comparisons
- The Emoji Movie Comparisons

Filed under: Friday Estimates, Dunkirk, Atomic Blonde, The Emoji Movie, Girls Trip