Weekend Estimates: Panda holds off Caesar on Super Bowl weekend
February 7, 2016
Super Bowl weekend isn’t exactly known for super-sized box office results, and this year will prove to be no exception, with Kung Fu Panda 3 comfortably winning the weekend with $21 million, down 49% from its debut. Hail, Caesar! will land in second place with $11.4 million or so, which is a decent performance from 2,232 theaters, although quite a bit softer than The Ladykillers’ $12.6 million first outing from 1,583 theaters back in 2004, and well behind the kind of numbers posted by True Grit.
This weekend’s big milestones are, as usual, racked up by Star Wars, which became the first film to reach $900 million at the domestic box office this weekend, and has become the third film, after Avatar and Titanic, to earn $2 billion globally (see all-time worldwide chart here).
Two films can be described as real flops this weekend.
The Choice will post a very disappointing $6.1 million from 2,631 movie houses. That’s well behind the $13 million debut of The Longest Ride, and also the $10 million opening of The Best of Me, which themselves were down from Nicholas Sparks’ historical average. He undoubtedly still commands enough business to be worth making more feature films out of his works, but perhaps we’ll be looking at smaller releases and a greater focus on home video in the future.
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is probably the biggest disappointment of the weekend, though. It is headed for a debut in the region of $5.2 million from 2,931 theaters. Although its budget was a relatively modest $28 million, its marketing costs must have been in the same range. Once the exhibitors have taken their cut, the film will only have recouped about $2.6 million towards a $60 million investment by the end of the weekend. Mediocre reviews and modest word-of-mouth means it’s highly unlikely to recover.
The field of films in limited release is typically quiet for this time of year, although Janus Films will be very happy with picking up $9,000 from a single theater for the re-release of Italian classic I Know Her Well.
- Weekend estimates
Bruce Nash, bruce.nash@the-numbers.com
- January weekend records
- Kung Fu Panda 3 comparisons
- Kung Fu Panda franchise history
- Hail, Caesar! comparisons
- Pride and Prejudice and Zombies comparisons
- The Choice comparisons
Filed under: Weekend Estimates, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Kung Fu Panda 3, Star Wars Ep. VII: The Force Awakens, The Choice, Hail, Caesar!, Io la conoscevo bene, Kung Fu Panda, Nicholas Sparks