Thursday Night Previews: Beast’s Start is a Beauty, with $16.3 million in Previews

March 17, 2017

Beauty and the Beast

Beauty and the Beast had the best previews of the year so far, earning $16.3 million during midnight shows last night. This tops Logan’s $9.5 million, which was the previous record holder. More impressively, it is better than Cinderella’s, The Jungle Book’s, and Maleficent’s combined previews of $10.7 million. Judging where it goes from here is a little tougher, on the other hand. Its reviews are good, but not amazing, while its demographics are more balanced than I expected. The audience was mostly women, but less than 60% overall. Cinderella had a 77% female audience. Also, there was a wide range of age groups among the audience, meaning it wasn’t just families going with their kids, but adults who grew up on the original movie. We predicted $168 million for the weekend, and that could be a little too conservative after this result. I’m not going to change the prediction just yet, but if Friday is big, then we will be forced to readjust our outlook.

The Belko Experiment was the only other film to have previews, and it earned $306,000. This is just above the $300,000 A Cure for Wellness earned. Belko does have slightly better reviews, so maybe we underestimated the film’s opeing weekend. $5 million isn’t out of the question at this point.

- Beauty and the Beast Comparisons
- The Belko Experiment Comparisons

Filed under: Midnight Previews, Logan, A Cure for Wellness, Beauty and the Beast, The Belko Experiment