Weekend Wrap-Up: Shades has a Bright Opening
February 18, 2015
As expected, Fifty Shades of Grey dominated the weekend box office, while Kingsman: The Secret Service was strong in its own way. Overall, the box office earned $214 million over the three-day weekend and $247 million including Monday. Its three-day number is 41% more than last weekend. It is also 21% more than the same weekend last year. The four-day box office was 19% higher than the same weekend last year. 2015 has now opened up a 6.0% lead over 2014 at $1.45 billion to $1.37 billion.
Fifty Shades of Grey earned first place with $85.17 million over the weekend. This is exactly what I predicted... except I predicted that over four days. Including Monday, the film earned $93.01 million. This is enough to convince Universal to go ahead with a sequel. I'm sure many people who saw the film will be happy about this, but most critics won't be among this group. Its not among the worst movies of the year, but that's only because we've already seen more than half-a-dozen real turkeys so far. I don't expect the film to have good legs, but it doesn't matter, because it has already made a profit on its worldwide numbers.
Kingsman: The Secret Service did better than expected earning second place with $36.21 million / $45.04 million over the weekend. Like the number one film, it earned more over the three-day weekend than it was expected to earn over four. Additionally, its reviews remained strong at 73% positive, while there's no direct competition over the next couple of weeks, so its legs should be quite good. Getting to $100 million will be difficult, but if it comes close, it could be turned into a franchise.
The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water slipped to third place with $31.46 million / $40.01 million over the weekend. This is just a little bit lower than predictions, but still enough to push its running tally past $100 million and as of Monday it has $103.14 million. Also, since the next animated film doesn't hit theaters for more than a month, SpongeBob should stick around in theaters for quite some time.
Up next is American Sniper, which pulled in $16.41 million / 18.78 million over the weekend for a total of $306.48 million. It hit a major milestone getting to $300 million over the weekend. This is enough to be the biggest war movie of all time and will soon become the biggest hit of 2014 topping The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 1.
Jupiter Ascending rounded out the top five with $9.25 million / $10.76 million over the weekend for a total of $33.88 million after 11 days of release. It would have needed to make more than this during its opening weekend to have a chance to break even.
Seventh Son was the only other film in the sophomore class with $4.15 million / $4.84 million for a total of $14.11 million. The film is doing much better internationally, but it apparently cost more than initially reported, so it will struggle to break even, if it ever does so.
Filed under: Weekend Wrap-up, Seventh Son, The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1, Jupiter Ascending, Kingsman: The Secret Service, Fifty Shades of Grey, American Sniper