Weekend Wrap-Up: Sully Saves the Weekend, Again, with $21.65 million
September 19, 2016
Sully led the way on the weekend box office chart matching predictions nearly perfectly with $21.65 million. Unfortunately for the overall box office, it wasn’t a close race as both Blair Witch and Bridget Jones’s Baby really struggled. This caused the overall box office to fall 12% from last weekend to just $89 million. Worse still, this weekend last year, the box office was rebounding and because of that, 2016 lost the year-over-year comparison by 21%. Year-to-date, 2016 is still ahead of 2015 by a substantial margin of 6.6% or $510 million. To emphasize, a lead of $8.22 billion to $7.71 billion and 2016 would really have to blow it to end up behind 2015 in the end. However, if things don’t turn around soon, this becomes more and more likely.
As expected, Sully won the box office race with $21.65 million, which is nearly identical to our prediction. The film now has $70.19 million after just ten days of release and will top $100 million domestically, possibly before the end of the month. The movie is more expensive than the average September release costing $60 million to make, but will pay for all of that domestically. As long as it doesn’t bomb internationally, it will break even sometime during its home market run.
Blair Witch landed in second place with $9.58 million. This is almost as much as it cost to make, but less than half of what people were expecting it would earn. Its reviews have continued to fall and its Tomatometer Score is just 36% positive at the moment. Combine this with its genre, the Sequel Effect, and its low theater average and the film will likely not remain in theaters for very long. Maybe it will be a hit on the home market, in which case the franchise could live on as direct-to-VOD releases.
Bridget Jones’s Baby was the best wide release of the week, but that didn’t help it at the box office, as it only managed third place with $8.57 million. On the other hand, the reviews and its target audience could help it stick around in theaters longer. Plus, it is already a hit in a few international markets and its opening worldwide weekend was bigger than its production budget. It will break even sooner rather than later.
Snowden was next with $8.03 million over the weekend. This is better than expected, but hardly a success. Conversely, its reviews are worse than expected, but still good for this time of year. Unfortunately, it cost $50 million to make, so it needed a lot of controversy or a lot of Awards Season Buzz to break even and it is getting neither of those.
Surprisingly, Don’t Breathe earned fifth place with $5.64 million over the weekend for a total of $75.37 million after four weeks of release. Sadly, it will fizzle out before reaching $100 million domestically, but it will get close enough that the studio will be very happy.
Hillsong: Let Hope Rise opened on the low end of expectations earning just $1.36 million. The film’s theater average was just $1,663, so theater owners will be looking to drop is A.S.A.P., so its reviews don’t matter. That said, 57% positive is fine for this type of release.
Moving onto the sophomore class, The Wild Life dipped just 17% to $2.77 million over the weekend for a ten-day total of $6.79 million. Unfortunately, its theater average is just $1,112, so this small drop-off won’t matter to theater owners, who will drop this film and grab Storks instead. The other sophomore film was The Disappointments Room, which plummeted 73% to just $377,000 over the weekend for a two-week total of $$2.22 million. It will all but disappear on Friday.
Speaking of disappearing, I forgot to mention last week’s Sophomore class. The two films, Morgan and The Light Between Oceans, did so poorly that I forgot about them a week after they came out. There’s a reason for that. The Light Between Oceans fell 61% to just $1.85 million last weekend for a ten-day total of $9.46 million. It was by far the better of the two films. Morgan fell 75% to just $505,000 last weekend for a two-week total of $3.60 million. This past weekend, it lost 95% of its theaters.
- Blair Witch Comparisons
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- Bridget Jones’s Baby Comparisons
- Snowden Comparisons
Filed under: Blair Witch Project