Box Office Report: Baby Mine, Why Were You Remade?

By Kayleigh Donaldson | Film | March 31, 2019 |

By Kayleigh Donaldson | Film | March 31, 2019 |

Tim Burton’s remake of Disney’s Dumbo was always going to take the top spot this weekend, but it didn’t quite reach the heights the studio were hoping for. While it opened to $45m domestically, early projections had it at $50m+ and some thought it could reach $60m. Nope. Sorry. And for a film with a rumoured $170m budget, that’s not great. I’m sure this will inspire a new round of headlines over whether this is the end of the road for Disney’s live-action remakes, but The Lion King is coming soon so calm down. It may lead to some further conversations on whether this strategy needs to be streamlined or not. Sure, live-action remakes of animated faves work, but not all films call for such treatment, and there seems to be way less nostalgic fervour for Dumbo compared to, say, Beauty and the Beast.

Jordan Peele’s Us fell to second place with a 52.7% drop from the previous week but it has already made about 6.5 times its budget back domestically, so Universal and Monkeypaw Productions can continue the party for a while.

Meanwhile, Captain Marvel brought in another $20.5m and has soared past $353m domestically and $990m worldwide. Oh wow, that boycott was killer for its grosses. However will Disney recover now?

Unplanned, a disgusting piece of anti-choice propaganda built on lies, misogyny and a bastardizing of faith, did well this week, but I don’t feel like talking about it.

Jumping from 39 to 8 this weekend was Hotel Mumbai, which added 920 theatres to its run and made $3.16m. The Dev Patel for Bond momentum continues!

The big bomb of the weekend was Harmony Korine’s The Beach Bum. For some reason, Neon decided to give this film a wide distribution in its first week of release, a choice they made with little prep. So it only made $1.8m from 1100 theatres and came in at number 10. It’s a new low for Matthew McConaughey but seriously, who thought it was a good idea to give this film a wide release? Yeah, Spring Breakers did well but that was an exception to the rule of Harmony Korine.

In limited release, the drama Mem>Diane made $27,043 from three theatres; the comedy Slut in a Good Way made $22k from seven locations, the horrifying Steve Bannon documentary The Brink took in $18,370 from four locations, and documentary Screwball made $12k from 13 locations.

Coming this week will be Pet Sematery, biopic The Best of Enemies, Claire Denis’s English language debut High Life, and the latest DC film, Shazam!

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

What films did you watch this weekend? Let us know in the comments.