Weekend Estimates: Get Out Pulls Off Huge Win
February 26, 2017
If you took a bet a year ago that the Oscar weekend box office would be dominated by a movie with an A- CinemaScore, and a score of 100% on Rotten Tomatoes, you probably wouldn’t get great odds. If you’d included the stipulation that the film would be a horror movie written and directed by Jordan Peele, your winnings would set you up for retirement. For that is what we have this morning: Get Out will easily top the chart this weekend, with Universal estimating a weekend around $30.5 million.
The film’s success is in part built upon hitting the “four quadrants” almost perfectly: its audience is 50% male, 50% female, 49% under 25, and 51% 25 and older, based on exit polling. Its also drawing in a broad racial demographic: 39% African-American, 36% Caucasian, 17% Hispanic, 4% Asian, and 4% “other,” according to the distributor. The combination of humor, social satire, and horror seems to have been a good fit the national mood right now (although it might not translate into huge international business), and excellent word of mouth will most likely propel the film well past $100 million domestically. Not bad for a film that cost $5 million, and probably under $20 million to market.
No other new release made it into the top ten this weekend. Rock Dog is expected to earn about $3.7 million for Lionsgate, which doesn’t have a financial stake in the film, so won’t suffer any losses as a result (it is distributing the film under a service deal). Collide has run into a brick wall, and will pick up just $1.5 million from 2,045 theaters for 13th place this weekend.
If box office is a predictor of Oscar wins, La La Land seems like a good bet. (OK, it seems like a good bet anyway.) It will basically stay flat from last weekend with $4.6 million, for $141 million to date domestically. It has also picked up a massive $206 million overseas, for close to $350 million worldwide so far. Among Oscar-nominated films still getting wide distribution, Lion will be off just 9% this weekend to $3.7 million, for an impressive $42.8 million to date. Current Oscar-nominee-box-office-champion Hidden Figures will earn about $5.9 million this time around for a total to date of $152.8 million.
In limited release, another film with a perfect score from Rotten Tomatoes (and Best Animated Feature nominee), My Life as a Zucchini is setting off with an impressive $28,206 from two theaters this weekend. While it isn’t favored to win the prize, it’ll definitely be worth looking out for in the weeks to come as it expands around the country.
The final piece of big news for the weekend is the Chinese debut of Resident Evil: The Final Chapter, which is reportedly $94.3 million. That marks an all-time record for a Hollywood film in China, and will go a long way towards filling in a hole left by modest performances for the film in the rest of the world. The 25% revenue share for the studio allowed by the Chinese government means that the financial rewards won’t be as high as if it did similar business anywhere else in the world, but it dwarfs all other countries (Japan is the second-best territory for the film, with $36.4 million so far).
- Get Out comparison chart
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- Collide comparison chart
- Rock Dog comparison chart
- The Great Wall comparison chart
- The Lego Batman Movie comparison chart
- Fifty Shades Darker comparison chart
- John Wick: Chapter Two comparison chart
Filed under: Weekend Estimates, Resident Evil: The Final Chapter, Collide, La La Land, Hidden Figures, Get Out, Rock Dog, Ma vie de Courgette, Jordan Peele