Weekend Wrap-Up: Glass Wins, Dragon Ball was Super
January 22, 2019
It was a mixed weekend with Glass missing admittedly high expectations, but a lot of the rest of the top five thrived. This includes Dragon Ball Super: Broly, which wasn’t even expected to open in the top five. Overall, the box office rose 8.6% from last weekend to $130 million. This is 5.0% less than the same weekend last year, which means 2019’s losing streak continues. This is more disappointing, as the misalignment in holidays gave 2019 a huge advantage this weekend. Year-to-date, 2019 is below 2018 by $100 million. In fact, 2019 is off to the worst start since 2012 or 2011, depending on if you take ticket price inflation into account. That said, it is still very early in the year and there are several nearly guaranteed monster hits on the way.
Glass opened with $46.50 million over four days, which is less than a lot of people thought it would earn over three days. However, Universal’s share of the opening weekend box office is substantially more than the $20 million it cost to make, so it will certainly break even sooner than later, even if its legs are weak. Its legs will very likely be weak. Not only are its reviews the worst in the franchise, but it only managed a B from CinemaScore. We will have a better picture with regards to its legs this time next week, but I suspect it will suffer a steep drop-off. I also suspect it will break even before it reaches the home market, so everyone involved will be quite happy about this.
The Upside was next with $15.01 million / $18.37 million over the weekend for a total of $46.68 million after eleven days of release. This is already more than it cost to make and it is certainly more than STX Entertainment had to pay for its domestic rights. The film is practically guaranteed to break even at this point, for both STX and Lantern Entertainment.
Aquaman landed in third place over the three-day weekend with $10.18 million and while it didn’t do as well on Monday, it still managed $12.75 million over four days lifting its total to $306.75 million.
Dragon Ball Super: Broly earned $9.81 million over the three day weekend and $20.20 million over the five-day period from Wednesday through Sunday. Its reviews are over 80% positive, and while the average score is much lower, this film may have created more than a few new Anime fans.
There was a virtual tie for fifth place with Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse earning $7.57 million / $10.15 million over the weekend for a total of $158.57 million so far.
A Dog’s Way Home was right behind with $7.19 million / $9.92 million over the weekend for a two-week total of $24.09 million. This is more than it cost to make, so it should break even sometime during its home market run.
There were two other films in the sophomore class. On the Basis of Sex dipped just 36% to $3.86 million over the three-day weekend and managed $4.77 million over four. Its running tally rose to $17.68 million after four full weeks of release, which is excellent for a limited release. On the other hand, Replicas will hopefully be the worst performing wide release of 2019. I say hopefully, because I would hate for a movie to do worse than this. It plummeted 82% to just $439,000 over the three-day weekend. Even adding in Monday only lifts its weekend haul to $541,000. The film’s running tally rose to $3.77 million, which is still below the $4 million its domestic distribution rights cost.
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Filed under: Weekend Wrap-up, Aquaman, Glass, Replicas, The Upside, A Dog’s Way Home, On the Basis of Sex, Dragon Ball Super: Broly, Unbreakable