Weekend Estimates: Angry Birds Win Civil War with $39 Million Debut
May 22, 2016
The Angry Birds Movie is performing at the top end of expectations this weekend, and will top the box office chart with a commendable $39 million. While that’s a long way behind the $75.1 million earned by Zootopia on its opening weekend back in March, it’s a very respectable figure, and gives Sony the increasingly-rare bragging rights over Disney this weekend, with Captain America: Civil War dropping to second place with $33.1 million.
Angry Birds is doing good business internationally as well, with $111 million earned to date for a worldwide total of $150 million. All in all, that points towards the film being profitable overall, but not by a huge margin, on a budget of $73 million. Whether it has the legs to be profitable enough to warrant a sequel is something that time will tell, but Sony is in bad enough need of a franchise, and co-producer Rovio Animation obviously has a vested interest in producing more films, if only to keep the brand in front of consumers, that a sequel seems very likely.
Disney has no problem in deciding whether to continue the Captain America/Marvel brand of course, but Civil War is performing fairly weakly on a week-to-week basis. After debuting with the 5th-biggest weekend in history, its third outing will be only the 21st-best 3rd weekend. The film has $347.4 million in the bank as of Sunday, making it the second-highest grossing film domestically this year. Curiously, five films have grossed between $325 million and $365 million in North America this year so far, but none have done better than that. Civil War should top Deadpool’s $362.7 million soon to becoming the top film domestically, but it’s going to fall short of $400 million. The studios (Disney in particular) seem to be very good at reaching their target audience these days, but finding a broader audience is looking like more of a problem (unless your movie is set in a galaxy far, far away or puts dinosaurs in a theme park).
Those five movies have also racked up impressive numbers overseas, and Civil War has become the first film of 2016 to earn over $1 billion worldwide. Zootopia is on the verge of doing the same, with a domestic total of $334 million and international earnings of $647 million so far.
Back home, two other wide releases are doing solid business this week. Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising will earn a slightly disappointing $21.8 million, well behind the $49 million first weekend enjoyed by the first film in the franchise. The Nice Guys, meanwhile, will post an $11.27 million debut from 2,865 theaters, for an average of $3,934. That’s OK for Summer counter-programming, but disappointing for a film that has been a hit with critics. Maybe good word of mouth can help it stick around for a while.
Three films stand out in limited release this weekend. Documentary Weiner will earn around $85,000 from just five locations this weekend; Maggie’s Plan is set for $67,000 or thereabouts, also from five venues; and Ma Ma is expected to earn around $9,500 from one theater. Of the three, Maggie’s Plan has the best long-term prospects for at least a solid expansion and decent business over the next couple of months.
Other noteworthy limited releases in there second weekend are Love & Friendship, with $582,000 from 47 theaters and The Lobster, with $408,000 from 24.
- Weekend estimates
- The Angry Birds Movie Comparisons
Bruce Nash, bruce.nash@the-numbers.com
- Biggest 3rd weekends
- Top 2016 movies at the global box office
- Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising Comparisons
- The Nice Guys Comparisons
- Captain America: Civil War comparisons
- The Jungle Book vs. Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice
Filed under: Weekend Estimates, The Angry Birds Movie, Captain America: Civil War, Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising, The Nice Guys, Zootopia, Love & Friendship, The Lobster, Maggie’s Plan, Ma Ma, Weiner, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Captain America