Official numbers won’t be in until tomorrow, and the three-way race for number one at the box-office this weekend has been complicated by winter weather on the Eastern seaboard, but it tentatively appears that Rogue One may have finally lost its position as the number one movie at the box-office a week sooner than I had expected (I figured it would be next week’s Patriots Day with Mark Wahlberg to knock it from its perch). The race is too close to call. As of this writing, Disney is calling it for Rogue One, while some other studios say that it’s still going to come in at number two.
Either way, let’s give it up for Rogue One. The Star Wars stand-alone looks like it racked up an impressive $22 million over the weekend, which brings its cumulative total to around $478 million, meaning it should pass Finding Dory’s $486 million by mid-week to become the top grossing film of 2016. That may be true for Star Wars installments for many years to come.
What movie might have finally brought Rogue One down?
It looked briefly like Sing — which has quietly been playing second fiddle to the Star Wars film since it opened on December 21st — would take the number one spot for the weekend. However, winter weather kept just enough kids home this weekend to nudge Sing back into third place with what looks like $20 million. That brings its overall total to around $215 million. It’s now beating on the door of Moana ($7.7 million, $226 million overall) for the 12th highest-grossing film of 2016, and the fourth highest grossing animated flick (behind Finding Dory, Secret Life of Pets and Zootopia).
It wasn’t the widest opener of the weekend that brought Rogue One down, either. Underworld: Blood Wars was not even a factor, coming in fourth place with a $13 million, at the disappointing end of expectations for Sony. That’s considerably less than what the last Underworld movie, Awakening, opened with in January 2012 ($25 million). Nevertheless, the Blood Wars has already put up over $45 million worldwide (on a $35 million budget), and while it looks like this installment will just break even once all is said and done, there has been a surprising amount of life in this franchise. Worldwide, the five films are approaching half a billion dollars in ticket sales despite their modest budgets. It’s also made Kate Beckinsale a consistent presence over the last 15 years.
But the film that may have finally take down Rogue One is Taraji P. Henson’s terrific, crowd-pleasing Hidden Figures. The film, which has been in 25 theaters since Christmas Day, finally expanded to 2,400 theaters this weekend and it looks like a huge hit for Fox, which only spent $25 million to make the movie. It opened with what looks like around $22 million, possibly beating out Rogue One.
It should also continue playing well for weeks to come. It received an A+ Cinemascore, a rarity in Hollywood, according to Deadline, which reports that the last major studio movies to receive an A+ were American Sniper, Selma, Queen of Katwe and The Help. An A+ Cinemascore almost always suggests a leggy box-office performance, which could be boosted should Hidden Figures fetch Oscar nominations (it was nominated in a few in minor categories at tonight’s Golden Globes).
Could Hidden Figures do to Rogue One what Lost in Space was to Titanic? We probably won’t know for absolute certain until Monday’s finals come in. As it stands, an average of all the studio estimates has Hidden Figures winning the weekend by a mere $60,000.
As for the “bummer” opener, that label applies to A Monster Calls, a kid’s fantasy film that critics have been raving about but one that might have been hurt by consistent reviews suggesting the film was a huge tearjerker. As Vince noted in his review, “You’ll probably cry!” and the movie is “relentlessly touching. To the point that it’s kind of exhausting.” I haven’t managed to see it yet, mostly because I got endured enough grief in Manchester by the Sea to last me a few months. Nevertheless, it’s a bummer when a great movie is not appreciated at the box-office because it’s too sad and A Monster Calls, which expanded into over 1500 theaters, looks like it only mustered $2 million for the weekend.
Meanwhile, in holdover news, La La Land added 750 more theaters and earned $10.5 million, a million more than it did last week. Passengers, once written off as a flop, continues to perform modestly, adding another $8.5 million to bring its domestic total to $80 million ($130 million worldwide and counting). Fences dropped 56 percent (not great for an Oscar-caliber movie, although Hidden Figures may have put a dent in it) to come in at 9th with $4.6 million. Assassin’s Creed rounded out the top 10 with $3.8 million, and with the video-game adaptation starting to shed theaters, a $60 million final tally may be difficult to capture.
Martin Scorsese’s Silence, Peter Berg’s Patriot’s Day and Ben Affleck’s Live By Night will expand nationwide next weekend, and based on their numbers over the course of their limited run, Patriot’s Day should do very well, Silence will do modestly, and Live By Night may end up a major disappointment next weekend.
