Weekend Wrap-Up: Home Run
March 31, 2015
After a couple of soft weeks at the box office, both new wide releases beat expectations. In fact, Home nearly doubled predictions. Get Hard also beat expectations, albeit by a smaller margin. Add in solid runs by the holdovers and the overall box office was very strong at $150 million. This is 19% higher than last week and 7.3% higher than the same weekend last year. We can thank Home entirely for this win. If it had merely matched predictions, 2015 would have lost the in the year-over-year comparisons. Year-to-date, 2015 is ahead of 2014 by a 2.0% margin at $2.37 billion to $2.32 billion.
It looks like Home won't be breaking the $100 million streak for digital films in March. In fact, it is already halfway there with an opening weekend of $52.11 million. On the downside, its reviews are mixed at only 47% positive, so its legs likely won't be great either. That said, it will have no problem becoming the second biggest hit of the month, which will be enough to make the studio happy.
Get Hard opened in a solid second place with $33.80 million, which is the best live-action opening for stars Will Ferrell since The Other Guys and the second-best Kevin Hart opening ever. The reviews are weak at only 31% positive, so it likely won't have the legs to get to $100 million. That said, it reportedly cost $40 million to make, so it won't need to get to $100 million domestically to break even.
Insurgent plummeted 59% to $21.54 million over the weekend for a total of $85.85 million after two weeks of release. It started slower than Divergent did and it fell faster during its sophomore stint. This is really bad news for the franchise. Worse still, the studio can't reduce the budget for the next two movies, because these films are already in production. Overall, I think the franchise will break even, but it won't be the monster hit they were hoping for.
Cinderella fell more than 50%, again, down to $17.04 million over the weekend for a total of $149.55 million after three weeks of release. The family-friendly nature of the movie and the reviews really should have resulted in better legs than this. Perhaps the market for live-action fairytales is saturated and only hardcore fans of these films are still going.
It Follows grabbed fifth place with $3.81 million over the weekend for a total of $4.55 million, including its limited release run. Its per theater average was just $3,129, which is not enough to suggest further expansion. On the other hand, if it can get to $10 million in theaters, it will finish ahead of some of this year's wide releases. The reviews suggest it is likely, but the genre could complicate things.
Looking in on the sophomore class, Do You Believe? fell to seventh place with $2.31 million over the weekend for a total of $7.21 million after ten days. It fell 36%, which is great, but it started too slowly to make a difference. The Gunman plummeted nearly 60% to just $2.04 million over the weekend for a total of $8.80 million after two. Next week, its theater count will take a beating and it will disappear from theaters shortly after that.
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Filed under: Weekend Wrap-up, Home, Cinderella, The Divergent Series: Insurgent, Get Hard, The Gunman, It Follows, Do You Believe?, The Divergent Series, Will Ferrell, Kevin Hart