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Infinity War image.jpg

Box Office Report: 'Infinity War' Makes ALL OF THE MONEY

By Kayleigh Donaldson | Film | April 29, 2018 |

By Kayleigh Donaldson | Film | April 29, 2018 |


Infinity War image.jpg

I mean, did we expect anything less?

I think we all knew that Avengers: Infinity War was the film to beat in 2018. Of course, it did just that, with a $250m opening weekend domestically, smashing that record, and making $630m worldwide. That’s better than Star Wars: The Force Awakens did in its opening weekend by a solid $3m or so. According to Box Office Mojo, those numbers account for 84.4% market share of the domestic top 12. Not too shabby. Other broken records include the largest single Saturday gross, largest single Sunday gross, the biggest April opening, and the fastest film to get to $150m, $200m and $250m respectively.

As you can imagine, that left basically every other film in the dust. The majority of older releases saw their numbers tumble dramatically. Both I Feel Pretty and A Quiet Place saw their grosses drop by half, while Rampage took a huge 64% hit. That was nothing compared to Super Troopers 2: 76% right there! The film that took the least damage was, unsurprisingly, Black Panther, which only fell by 11% and ended up 3 places higher in the top ten as a result.

Indie films in limited release fared better, because coastal counter-programming has always counted for something. Disobedience, a lesbian romance centred on London’s Orthodox Jewish community, made over $241k from 5 screenings. Strong reviews bolstered this one, although the same couldn’t be said for Kings. Halle Berry and Daniel Craig’s latest drama, set during the LA riots of the 90s, was slaughtered critically when it premiered at Cannes last year. It opened in 214 theatres and made $173k - that’s about $809 per theatre, compared to $48,255 per screen that Disobedience made. To be fair to Kings, it was horrendously marketed and even critics I know had no idea it was being released. Claire Denis’s latest film, Let the Sunshine In, made $40k from 2 theatres.

Both Lean on Pete and The Rider, two critically acclaimed indies, opened to wider audiences and saw great increases to their box office. Neither is making millions yet, but it’s important to draw attention to those indie distributors fighting the good fight in the face of tough opposition. Make sure you read Roxana’s wonderful piece on these two films.

Next week’s new releases are predictably low-key given the obvious competition: The latest Diablo Cody film, Tully, a gender-swapped remake of Overboard which I’m sure won’t inspire any think-pieces or controversy, and some horror film imaginatively titled Bad Samaritan. Apparently David Tennant is in it.

For more information of the weekend box office, click here.

What films did you watch this weekend? Is that a pointless question for me to even ask? Answers in the comments.