Weekend Wrap-Up: Super Bowl Wasn’t Super and Neither was the Box Office
February 5, 2019
The Super Bowl broke records, but not in a good way. (Lowest scoring Super Bowl... ever.) Even so, the Super Bowl still had a devastating effect on the box office leading to arguably the worst Super Bowl weekend box office results since 1999. More on that year later. As expected, Glass earned first place on the weekend box office chart with $9.55 million, but it is never a good sign when the number one film earns less than $10 million. The best / only new release was Miss Bala, which only managed $6.86 million. Overall, the box office fell 27% from last week down to just $72 million. Hopefully this is the worst weekend of the entire year. Worse still, this was 24% lower than the same weekend last year. Year-to-date, 2019 has pulled in $866 million, which is $160 million or 16% lower than 2018’s pace. This is the worst start in terms of raw dollars since 2012 and the worst start in terms of tickets sold since 1999. However, the box office will pick up in March and while I don’t think we’ll match last year’s record pace, we also won’t see a once in a decade slump either.
Glass completed the threepeat with $9.55 million over the weekend for a three-week total of $88.67 million. It will get to $100 million, but it might not be in the top five when it hits that milestone.
The Upside remained in second place with $8.68 million over the weekend for a total of $75.42 million after four weeks of release. It is also on pace for $100 million domestically, assuming new releases don’t force it from too many theaters before it can get there.
Miss Bala only managed third place with $6.86 million during its opening weekend. Its reviews were just 25% positive, while it only managed a B from CinemaScore. Neither of those suggest the film will have long legs. Additionally, there are seven films opening wide over the next two weeks, so there will be a lot of competition for screens, resulting in even shorter legs.
Aquaman slipped to fourth place with $4.88 million over the weekend for a total of $323.62 million after seven weeks of release.
Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse remained in fifth place during its eighth week of release with $4.55 million pushing its running tally to $175.42 million.
Meanwhile, They Shall Not Grow Old expanded into over 700 theaters earning tenth place with $2.44 million over the weekend for a running tally of $10.78 million, including special engagements. A lot of people thought it would reach the top five, so this is disappointing. That said, $10 million is more than all but a handful of documentaries manage to earn.
Neither of the sophomore class films were able to crack the top five. The Kid Who Would Be King came the closest landing in seventh place with $4.25 million over the weekend for a two-week total of $13.22 million. It fell 41% during its sophomore stint, which wouldn’t be a bad decline, except that its theater average is just $1,204, so not many theater owners will be excited to keep it, especially with direct competition opening this weekend. Serenity fared much worse, down 61% to just $1.70 million over the weekend for a two-week total of $7.54 million. Its theater average is a mere $665, so it should disappear from theaters in the next couple of weeks.
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Filed under: Weekend Wrap-up, Aquaman, The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part, Glass, The Kid Who Would Be King, The Upside, Miss Bala, Serenity, They Shall Not Grow Old