Friday Estimates: Beast Knocks Out Kong with $63.79 million
March 18, 2017
As expected, Beauty and the Beast earned first place on Friday. Its performance was a little better than expected, with Disney’s movie earning $63.79 million. To put this into perspective, this is more than Kong: Skull Island earned during its opening weekend. There are some confusing elements to deal with. Firstly, the reviews improved to 71% positive, which is still lower than anticipated, but good enough to not hurt the film’s legs. Additionally, it earned a solid A from CinemaScore. Strangely, the demographics changed, with women representing 72% of Friday’s audiences. That’s up from just under 60% during Thursday’s previews and a lot of times it goes in the other direction. So what does this mean for the future? The film just needs an internal multiplier above 2.6 to become the biggest March opening of all time. That seems very likely at this point. In fact, anything less than $175 million will be seen as a little disappointing.
Kong: Skull Island fell 64% Friday-over-Friday to $7.32 million, which isn’t bad, all things considered. It should bounce back over the weekend with just over $25 million. This is a little lower than we predicted, but still a good result. As long as the film can come close to its $190 million production budget domestically, then it will break even thanks to franchise synergy. This is why every studio is chasing the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Each new release boosts the home market sales of the older films, so studios get multiple chances to push a film into profitability. Is Skull Island doing enough to justify the MonsterVerse? Mostly. I’m not 100% convinced at this point, but I also don’t think it is a real miss either.
The Belko Experiment did okay on Friday, earning sixth place with $1.5 million, which puts it on pace for $4 million over the weekend. It only cost $5 million to make, so it could break even, if it does well on VOD. Its reviews are mixed so VOD is a better choice to see the movie than going out to a theater.
On the limited release front, T2: Trainspotting opened with $62,000 in just 5 theaters. It will have one of the best theater averages for a limited release so far this year and it should earn at least some measure of mainstream success after this start.
- Beauty and the Beast comparison chart
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- The Belko Experiment comparison chart
Filed under: Friday Estimates, Kong: Skull Island, Beauty and the Beast, T2: Trainspotting, The Belko Experiment, Marvel Cinematic Universe, MonsterVerse