Box Office Report: Sexy Robot Romance Death Weekend

By Kayleigh Donaldson | Film | February 18, 2019 |

By Kayleigh Donaldson | Film | February 18, 2019 |

Remember when Black Panther came out this time last year and utterly dominated the box office? Remember how that $202m three day weekend domestic gross, which was three quarters of the total gross for the top 12 films that weekend, came from one movie? Remember how we all thought that could mean the beginning of a new box office age, wherein February stopped being a dumping ground and became a bankable month? Yeah, that didn’t repeat itself this year. Not even close.

I’m not sure anyone was predicting Alita: Battle Angel would make Wakanda numbers. Indeed, some are already writing it off as a $150m flop. Still, it’d be smart to wait for the China box office numbers since this movie seems to have been made more with that audience in mind. For now, we have the domestic gross and it’s just sort of middling. The film easily took the top spot but with only $27.8m. The reported budget for this one is $170m so this’ll need to do major business abroad to break even. It’s current worldwide total is just under $131m. Eh.

At number 2 is The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part, with $21.2m. Those aren’t great numbers, especially with Warner Bros. hoping this would be an animated franchise with legs. At least they’ve got Aquaman, which just passed $331m domestic.

At number 3 is Isn’t It Romantic, which made $14.2m this weekend. That’s pretty solid but I’m not sure this will last very long, especially with very tough competition around the corner in two weeks. The next new release of the weekend is Happy Death Day 2U. Admit it, you like that title. Blumhouse know what they’re doing: A 9.8m opening weekend and total domestic gross of $13.5m so far, and all for a film with a $9m budget. Hey, when your formula works, why screw with it?

Ralph Breaks the Internet added an extra 956 theatres to its run, 13 weeks in, bringing in just over $900k this weekend. Why, you ask? Well, this film is about $1.4m away from passing $200m domestically, and Disney would love to push it over that line. I’m actually surprised this film didn’t do better domestically. It’s Disney, it’s a sequel, it was well reviewed and it did great business in that first weekend. Granted, as with anything Disney, the strengthening of the brand is as crucial as the box office numbers, and it has made over $500m worldwide.

Fighting with My Family, the WWE movie about the wrestler Paige and her family, is getting a wide release next week, but its limited opening of $131k in 4 theatres is nothing to sneeze at. It will be interesting to see if the brand name power of the WWE can put butts in seats, and I’m all for anything that strengthens the growing ‘best actress of her generation’ reputation of the amazing Florence Pugh.

This coming week sees the release of How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World.

You can check out the rest of the weekend box office here.