Weekend Box Office Report: ‘Beauty and the Beast’ Had a LOT of Guests
It might be a tale as old as time, but audiences have proven there’s still a few petals left on that old flower. Despite being projected to open at somewhere between $214–245 million worldwide, Beauty and the Beast knocked the pants off those projections, eclipsing $350 million at the international box office and setting a March record for domestic releases along the way. Let’s take a look at how things shook out this past weekend with some of the expected grosses.
Film | Weekend | Per Screen | ||
1 | Beauty and the Beast | $170,000,000 | $40,380 | $170,000,000 |
2 | Kong: Skull Island | $28,850,000 (-52.7%) | $7,501 | $110,125,294 |
3 | Logan | $17,500,000 (-54.1%) | $4,746 | $184,026,885 |
4 | Get Out | $13,249,475 (-36.1%) | $2,170 | $133,117,620 |
5 | The Shack | $6,130,000 (-38.7%) | $2,368 | $42,614,630 |
6 | The LEGO Batman Movie | $4,700,000 (-38.3%) | $1,718 | $167,423,352 |
7 | The Belko Experiment | $4,051,000 | $3,021 | $4,051,000 |
8 | Hidden Figures | $1,500,000 (-45.7%) | $1,291 | $165,559,069 |
9 | John Wick: Chapter Two | $1,200,000 (-55.1%) | $1,127 | $89,790,804 |
10 | Before I Fall | $1,034,425 (-65.5%) | $667 | $11,295,102 |
The big news here, of course, is Beauty and the Beast, the latest live-action Disney remake to blow up at the box office. Not only did Beauty and the Beast outgross the entire 2017 domestic box office of The LEGO Batman Movie in a single weekend, the film’s $170 million opening weekend means that it now has the largest debut of any March movie, ever. The previous record was last year’s Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice at $166 million. If there were any lingering doubts among Disney executives as to whether they should continue with their live-action remakes, I’m pretty sure those doubts just went straight out the window.
The Belko Experiment, the other big release from this past weekend, opened in seventh place with $4 million. While that’s not a particularly impressive first weekend, the film did open on the lower side of a wide release at only 1,300 theaters and will probably earn back its budget ($5 million) at some point in the next few days. Word of mouth on this one has been cagey; even horror fans like myself were unimpressed with James Gunn’s mean-spirited movie. Since exactly $16 of that total came out of my pocket, I feel like I’m justified in saying this is not a movie anyone but the most slaughter-friendly of horror fans should seek out.
In second place is Kong: Skull Island with a $28.8 million gross. Last week, I pointed to the better box office numbers of 2014’s Godzilla as a sign that Kong: Skull Island was not exactly the smash hit Warner Bros. was hoping for, but there is an upside in all of this: this film’s 52.7% drop between its first and second weekends a huge improvement upon Godzilla’s 66.8% fall, meaning the two films grossed about the same amount in their second weekends despite Godzilla’s early advantage. While Kong: Skull Island’s international numbers will ensure this film is a success, a gentler decline could be just what the doctor ordered for Warner’s planned monster franchise.
In third place is Logan with a $17.5 million gross. Having now crossed $184 million total, Hugh Jackman’s final outing officially passes X-Men Origins: Wolverine’s $179 million domestic gross to top the list of standalone Wolverine movies. There’s even an outside chance that Logan could catch up to X-Men: The Last Stand and X-Men: Days of Future Past near the top of the X-Men lists at the $230 million mark, though with the summer movie season starting in earnest, 20th Century Fox should content itself with a $200 million finish.
In fourth place is Get Out, which, well, what more can we say? The movie grossed more than $13 million in its fourth weekend and sits at $133 million overall, a staggering number given the film’s $4.5 million budget. The only real question at this point isn’t whether you’ve seen Get Out, but how many times you saw it in theaters.
In fifth place is The Shack with $6 million. The Shack has proven that faith films are still big business for the right audience; with only a few hundred thousand more, the film will crack BoxOfficeMojo’s list of the highest grossing religious films of all time. Good for Octavia Spencer.
And then there’s the rest of the Top 10, a combination of movies enjoying one more good week at the box office before shutting things down. The LEGO Batman movie picked up another $4.7 million in sixth place, officially passing Hidden Figures — $1.5 million in eight place — on the list of the highest-grossing movies of 2017. John Wick: Chapter Two enjoyed what will surely be its last week on this list, grossing $1.2 million in eighth place and officially closing the door on whatever shot it had at $100 million domestically. Finally, Before I Fall rounds out the Top 10 with a little over one million, good for only $11 million total. Then again, Before I Fall only cost about $5 million to make, so call it a slight success for Open Road Films.
And for the art film crowd, Danny Boyle’s long-awaited T2: Trainspotting sequel and Terrence Malick’s Song to Song each finished behind only Beauty and the Beast on a per-theater basis, but then again, both films opened in a combined nine theaters across North America, so it’s probably best not to read too much into that. We’ll see how things go as both distributors begin to expand.