It was a classic good news/bad news situation for Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice this weekend. The good news is that BvS crossed $680 million worldwide, and it’s already bigger than the entire global box offices of Iron Man, Iron Man 2, Captain America, Man of Steel, and Thor. At $681 million and change, it’s the 11th-highest 10-day gross for any movie.
The bad news, if there can be any bad news for a movie making that much money, is that it dropped 68.4% from its first weekend gross. Most analysts were predicting a big drop, but 68.4% is a big flopping drop indeed, on the very high end of any predictions. That gives it the fifth largest second-weekend drop for any film opening above $100 million, equal to Zack Snyder’s rape parable Sucker Punch and worse even than Josh Trank’s Fantastic Four (68.2%). The only films opening above $100 million with a worse second-weekend drop were Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 and three Twilight movies.
Keep in mind, BvS fell this hard amidst almost zero meaningful competition. Sucker Punch (which had a much smaller opening than BvS) went up against Source Code, Insidious, and Hop in its second weekend. Fantastic Four had Straight Outta Compton and Man From U.N.C.L.E. in its. The only new movie opening against Batman V Superman this weekend, meanwhile, was God’s Not Dead 2, which opened at $8.1 million. That was down from the original’s $9.1 million, despite opening in 1,639 more theaters. It seems pretty likely that a title like “God’s Not Dead” doesn’t have quite the same punch the second time around.
As for older movies, Zootopia held strong, grossing $20 million and dropping only 16.7%. My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 also held well, fading 37.7% $11.1 million.
In any case, there are plenty of dubious inferences to be made about Batman V Superman and its radically front-loaded performance (to support or contradict last week’s dubious inferences…), but the most conservative conclusion is that most of the people who wanted to see it, saw it right away. Now, let us never speak of this again…
This weekend brings us Melissa McCarthy in The Boss and the first-person shooter movie, Hardcore Henry (which doesn’t seem to be screening for critics), with Jake Gyllenhaal’s Demolition opening in limited release.
| Film | Weekend | Per Screen | ||
| 1 | Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice | $52,385,000 (-68.4) | $12,309 | $261,547,00 |
| 2 | Zootopia | $20,000,000 (-16.7) | $5,408 | $275,939,000 |
| 3 | My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 | $11,130,000 (-37.7) | $3,501 | $36,493,000 |
| 4 | God’s Not Dead 2 | $8,104,321 | $3,350 | $8,104,321 |
| 5 | Miracles From Heaven | $7,540,000 (-22.1) |
$2,393 | $46,822,000 |
| 6 | Allegiant | $7,550,000 (-39.3) | $1,897 | $56,384,797 |
| 7 | 10 Cloverfield Lane | $4,750,000 (-20.0)) | $1,892 | $63,563,000 |
| 8 | Meet the Blacks | $4,086,000 | $4,026 | $4,086,000 |
| 9 | Eye in the Sky | $4,055,000 (+334.9) | $3,941 | $6,149,000 |
| 10 | Deadpool | $3,500,000 (-28.5) | $1,778 | $355,108,000 |
Chart via ScreenCrush