Weekend Estimates: Hidden Figures wins MLK Weekend
January 15, 2017
A pile-up at the box office this weekend will leave a crush of new releases behind Hidden Figures and La La Land, which remain the top two films at the box office. Hidden Figures will be down just 10% (in part thanks to expanded distribution) to $20.45 million, for $54.8 million in total, as of Sunday evening. Fox is projecting a $25.3 million 4-day weekend for the film. La La Land is even more impressive, growing its box office by 43% and moving from fifth to second on the chart with $14.5 million, and $74.1 million to date. It’s record-breaking performance at the Golden Globes has clearly lifted it to another level with audiences.
Behind those two, the chart is not exactly carnage for the debutants and wide expansions, but it is certainly a mixed bag. To begin with, Sing ($13.8 million for $233 million to date) and Rogue One ($13.76 million for $498.9 million) are third and fourth among the official estimates, meaning that the highest new entrant only managed fifth. However, that film, The Bye Bye Man, will earn about $13.4 million, which could be enough to bump it up as high as third when the final numbers come in, and in any case is a great performance for a film that cost $7.4 million to make and wasn’t expensive to market. STX won’t make a fortune from the film, but it will be nicely profitable.
The same cannot be said of Patriots Day, which lands in sixth place this weekend with $12 million in its first weekend in wide release. Not far behind it come Monster Trucks, with $10.5 million from 3,119 theaters, and Sleepless, with $8.5 million from a more modest 1,803 locations. All three films are doing sort-of OK by some measures, but Patriots Day is encumbered by high expectations and a $40 million production budget that won’t come close to being recouped, and Monster Trucks cost $125 million to make, and will barely make a tenth of that back at the box office. Sleepless is in less dire straits financially, but is lost in the noise.
That leaves two out-and-out duds this weekend. Live by Night will miss the top ten with $5.4 million from 2,822 theaters, and Silence will miss the top fifteen with $1.94 million from 747 cinemas. Very slightly in their defense, Live by Night is the 12th-highest-earning film to finish 11th for the weekend (the record for the most earned by the 11th-placed film is $7.777 million, by No Country for Old Men over Thanksgiving weekend, 2007); Silence, meanwhile, will most likely be among the fifty highest-earning films to finish 16th over a weekend (that record is held by Snow Falling on Cedars on a very packed MLK weekend back in 2000).
With such a crush of films playing right now, it perhaps isn’t surprising that we’re not seeing many titles in the $10,000-club, but two films will top that theater average this weekend: 20th Century Women will do so for A24, with $307,571 projected from 29 theaters; and Worlds Apart will launch with about $14,000 from a single venue for Cinema Libre.
Filed under: Weekend Estimates, Silence, Monster Trucks, Live by Night, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, The Bye Bye Man, Sing, Patriots Day, La La Land, 20th Century Women, Hidden Figures, Sleepless, Enas Allos Kosmos