Weekend Box Office Report: ‘Power Rangers’ Is No Match for Beauties or Beasts
After several weeks of limited movement, a handful of new releases prompted a pretty thorough shakeup of the Box Office Top 10. While Beauty and the Beast continued its unstoppable assault on the domestic box office, we also said hello this weekend to three new movies and goodbye to a handful of old favorites from the first few months of the year. Let’s start with the estimated numbers as of Sunday afternoon.
Film | Weekend | Per Screen | ||
1 | Beauty and the Beast | $88,347,000 (-49.4%) | $20,985 | $316,952,887 |
2 | Power Rangers | $40,500,000 | $10,967 | $40,500,000 |
3 | Kong: Skull Island | $14,425,000 (-48.2%) | $3,935 | $133,502,238 |
4 | Life | $12,600,000 | $4,005 | $12,600,000 |
5 | Logan | $10,145,000 (-43.1%) | $3,207 | $201,455,596 |
6 | Get Out | $8,681,010 (-35.4%) | $3,509 | $147,499,045 |
7 | CHiPs | $7,600,000 | $3,084 | $7,600,000 |
8 | The Shack | $3,785,000 (-37%) | $1,624 | $49,072,044 |
9 | The LEGO Batman Movie | $1,970,000 (-57.2%) | $1,203 | $170,841,252 |
10 | The Belko Experiment | $1,807,025 (-56.3%) | $1,348 | $7,577,590 |
In first place — and really, it’s not even close — is Disney’s live-action Beauty and the Beast remake, grossing $88 million in its second weekend to bring it over $300 million at the domestic box office. For comparison’s sake, Beauty and the Beast has made only $50 million less in its first two weekends than 2016’s The Jungle Book made during its entire theatrical run. For now, it would seem the question isn’t whether Beauty and the Beast will end up the highest-grossing live-action Disney movie, but how far into Disney’s all-time Top 10 Beauty and the Beast is capable of going. Frozen, Captain America: Civil War, and Iron Man 3 are all well within reach at the $400 million mark.
In second place with $40.5 million is Power Rangers, Lionsgate’s attempt to bring the popular television series to the big screen for a new generation. It’s probably not fair to compare Power Rangers to its 1995 predecessor; that film only did about $38 million at the domestic box office, but its budget was also a fraction of the reboot at an estimated $11 million, so the stakes are very much different. As is so often the case with movies like this, the international box office will probably determine whether this is a one-and-done affair or the beginning of a brand new franchise.
Also new this weekend is Life, the science-fiction thriller from the screenwriters of Deadpool and Zombieland. Despite the film’s sleek production effects, Life only cost Sony about $58 million to make; with that in mind, the film’s fourth place opening at $12.6 million isn’t the disaster it might’ve been with a bigger budet. Life certainly isn’t going to remind anyone of Gravity, but a couple of weekends between $5 and $10 million at the domestic box office could make it a nicely profitable little movie worldwide when everything is said and done.
The last wide release of the weekend, CHiPs, is a much less certain bet in seventh place. With only $7.6 million against a $25 million budget, CHiPs isn’t the sort of film that will break the bank at Warner Bros., but a raunchy buddy comedy without a headliner probably isn’t going to surprise everyone with gentle decline at the box office. With a handful of wide releases hitting theaters next weekend, I wouldn’t be shocked to see CHiPs fall off the Top 10 entirely in only its second weekend.
The remaining films of the Top 10 are a little different than what we’ve seen previously. While both Logan ($10 million in fifth place) and Get Out ($8.6 million in sixth place) continue their separate marches to box office success, the bottom of the list is noticeably missing repeat contenders Hidden Figures and John Wick: Chapter Two. The Shack slipped into the Top 10 list of religious films thanks to a $3.7 million gross in eighth place; The LEGO Batman Movie enjoyed probably its last weekend on the list with $1.9 million in ninth place; and, in a bit of a surprise, The Belko Experiment clung to the final spot with $1.8 million in tenth place. That being said, with more movies on the way next weekend, the writing is on the wall for these three films.