Weekend Estimates: Boss Baby Beats Beauty
April 2, 2017
A great marketing campaign and a beautifully-timed opening will most likely combine to give The Boss Baby a win at the box office this weekend, according to studio estimates released on Sunday. Victory isn’t completely assured, because the margin is fairly slim: Boss Baby is headed for $49 million, per Fox’s Sunday morning estimate, while Disney is expecting $47.5 million for Beauty and the Beast. Both studios expect Beast to win on Sunday, so the eventual winner will depend on today’s figures, but it would be a real surprise if the order changes when final numbers come in tomorrow.
Boss Baby won things fairly easily on Friday, with $15.575 million or so, compared to Beauty’s $13 million. That was helped by $1.8 million at midnight screenings though, so the margin between the films on Friday itself was about $750,000. Saturday’s estimates have Boss Baby winning by about $275,000, with $20 million vs. $19.725 million. The studios differ slightly on their Sunday estimates, but Disney is expected to move ahead in either case, with the studio projecting $14.8 million for the day for Beauty and the Beast, to $13.4 million for The Boss Baby. That will wipe out Friday and Saturday’s margin between the two films, but the Thursday previews will give Baby enough of a head start to win the weekend. Almost certainly.
Boss Baby was helped to its win by a stellar marketing campaign from Fox, which is almost alone among Disney’s competitors right now in being able to extract maximum mileage from a film. (Universal is the other major example.) The studio also did solid work on maximizing the audience for Logan and Hidden Figures, which are already among the top five earners for the year. Boss Baby could join them, although it will undoubtedly be overtaken by The Fate of the Furious when it comes out on April 14.
The other big factor at play this weekend is that so many people have already seen Beauty and the Beast. Disney’s monster hit will reach $395 million by the end of the weekend, making it already the 26th-highest-grossing film at the domestic box office. Its momentum is dissipating a little though: it will have the 6th-best third weekend, after having the 4th-best second weekend last weekend. So, while it will pass $450 million, a place in the all-time top ten films is looking like a stretch right now. To get there, it will need to top the original Star Wars, which stands on $461 million.
Beauty is off only 47% this weekend, though, after falling 48% last weekend. So it’s not as if the film has collapsed. Some business was likely taken away by Boss Baby, but this seems like more of a case of family audiences having already seen Beauty and the Beast, but being coaxed out to theaters again to see something a little lighter, and funnier.
Non-family audiences couldn’t be coaxed out to see Ghost in the Shell this weekend, unfortunately. The sci-fi action movie stalled at $19 million for the weekend. A theater average of $5,523 isn’t dismal, but the debate over whitewashing and mediocre reviews clearly dragged on the numbers. With a production budget of $110 million, the film will need to do a lot of business overseas to make up, and things don’t look bad there, with $40.1 million in international earnings this weekend.
The Zookeeper’s Wife opened in 541 theaters this weekend, and will finish in tenth place with a projected $3.3 million. Focus is saying they are happy with the result, and plan to accelerate expansion of the film, based on positive audience feedback. With an average of $6,191 per theater, the film does have a shot at having a decent run, since it’s aiming at an older audience that won’t have a lot to choose from in the coming months.
In limited release, David Lynch: The Art Life sets out with a solid $12,126 performance in a single theater for Janus Films.
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Filed under: Weekend Estimates, Logan, The Boss Baby, Ghost in the Shell, Beauty and the Beast, The Zookeeper’s Wife, Hidden Figures, David Lynch: The Art Life