Weekend Wrap-Up: Kingsman Earns Gold with $39.02 million
September 26, 2017
The weekend box office was good, for a September weekend, but disappointing compared to expectations. Kingsman: The Golden Circle did earn first place, but with only $39.02 million. Granted, this is great for September, but $10 million less than our prediction, and our prediction wasn’t even on the high end of expectations. The Lego Ninjago Movie struggled in third place with $20.43 million. The shine has come off the Lego franchise. Fortunately, It continues to be strong and that helped the overall box office. We saw 5.6% growth from last weekend reaching $117 million. This is also 13% higher than the same weekend last year, so there’s clearly reason to celebrate. 2017 is still behind 2016 in the year-to-date comparison, but it closed the gap to 4.7% or $390 million at $7.94 billion to $8.33 billion.
Kingsman: The Golden Circle opened with $39.02 million, which is a little better than its predecessor opened with. However, sequels tend to start faster and decline much quicker, so this is not good news in the long term. Additionally, this film’s reviews are 25 points below the original’s reviews. (Both films did earn a B plus from CinemaScore.) It should have long enough legs to reach $100 million, but it won’t match the original’s domestic run. Should it prove more resilient internationally, then it will break even early in its home market run. If it falls faster, then the film could be in trouble.
It matched expectations nearly perfectly with $29.76 million during its third weekend of release for a running tally of $266.10 million. By this time next week, the film will be nearing $300 million domestically, making it just the fifth film released in 2017 to get to that milestone.
The Lego Ninjago Movie opened in third place with $20.43 million. That’s less than Storks opened with this weekend last year. The reviews were only 51% positive, so that didn’t help, while it only managed a B plus from CinemaScore, which is weak for a family film. Perhaps two Lego movies in one year was too much.
American Assassin came within a rounding error of expectations with $6.26 million over the weekend for a two-week total of $26.19 million. It will match its $33 million production budget, perhaps as early as this time next week. If it can reach $75 million worldwide, then it has a shot at break even eventually.
Rounding out the top five was mother!, which also came within a rounding error of predictions, with $3.29 million over the weekend and $13.46 million after ten days of release. It is doing better internationally, but not by enough to really make a difference financially. It could become a cult classic, but its chances of breaking even are slim to none.
Friend Request bombed earning just $2.00 million during its opening weekend. Its theater average was $778, which isn’t the worst for a truly wide release of the 21st century, it’s not even the worst of this year. However, it does mean theater owners will be looking to drop it as soon as they are contractually able to.
Stronger opened in the top ten, despite playing in just 574 theaters. Unfortunately, this was due to weak competition, as the film only managed $1.61 million during its opening weekend. This will likely kill its Awards Season chances, as it won’t stick around in theaters long enough for enough Awards Season voters to see it and the studio won’t have the budget to mount an aggressive Awards Season ad campaign.
- Kingsman: The Golden Circle Comparisons
- The Lego Ninjago Movie Comparisons
- Friend Request Comparisons
Filed under: Weekend Wrap-up, The Lego Ninjago Movie, Stronger, Kingsman: The Golden Circle, Friend Request, mother!, It, American Assassin, Lego