Weekend Wrap-Up: Aliens Crash, but Still Top Chart with $36.16 million
May 23, 2017
As expected, Alien: Covenant earned first place on the weekend box office chart. However, it had a strange journey there. Everything, Everything earned more during its opening weekend than it cost to make, which is great news for the studio. On the other hand, Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul will be the last entry in this franchise for a long time. Meanwhile, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 became only the second film released in 2017 to hit $300 million domestically. Unfortunately, the good news didn’t outweigh the bad news and the overall box office fell 10% from last weekend to $122 million. Compared to last year, the weekend box office was 11% lower. Fortunately, 2017 still has a $130 million lead over 2016 at $4.23 billion to $4.10 billion, so there’s no reason to panic.
What happened to Alien: Covenant over the weekend? It earned first place on Friday with $15.30 million. At the time, we predicted an opening weekend total of just over $40 million. However, it only managed $36.16 million. To put this into perspective, so far this year there have been 41 films to open truly wide on a Wednesday. Even if you strip out the family films, which tend to have long legs, the average internal multiplier for the remaining films is 2.78 with a standard deviation of 0.33. Alien: Covenant managed an internal multiplier of just 2.36. That’s the fourth worst of that group. (The Fate of the Furious is the bottom of the class with an internal multiplier of 2.16.) Its reviews were good at 73% positive, while its CinemaScore was weak at just B. Overall these numbers of fine and they don’t explain why it collapsed this fast. This is really bad news going forward and it might create a delay is any further installments in the franchise.
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 was pushed into second place with $34.65 million over the weekend for a total of $301.39 million in 17 days of release. It wasn’t that long ago taking a mere 17 days to get to $300 million would have been a record. Today, there were many who thought this film would have hit that mark a couple of days earlier. That said, there are plenty of reasons to celebrate. The film became the eighth film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe to reach $300 million, while this time next week it will likely surpass the original Guardians of the Galaxy and will be the fifth biggest hit in the MCU. By the end, it will come relatively close to $400 million domestically.
Everything, Everything matched expectations perfectly with $11.73 million during its opening weekend, which is more than the $10 million it cost to make. Good job. The film’s reviews are mixed, but it earned an A minus from CinemaScore, so clearly the target audience enjoyed it more than the critics did. Getting to the $50 million mark is very unlikely, but anything more than $30 million will likely be enough to earn a profit sometime during its home market run.
Snatched plummeted 60% to $7.83 million over the weekend, but this was still enough for fourth place. After two weeks of release, the film has made $33.02 million and should quickly match its $42 million production budget domestically. Unfortunately, it needed to make about $100 million worldwide to have any chance of breaking even any time soon and at the moment, that seems unlikely.
King Arthur: Legend of the Sword managed to grab fifth place, barely, with $7.15 million over the weekend for a two-week total of $27.50 million. Had the film earned $27.50 million during its opening weekend, it still would have been a box office bomb.
The only other wide release of the week was Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul, which earned sixth place with $7.13 million during its opening weekend. The film had the worst reviews of the week and only earned a B from CinemaScore, which is really bad for a family film. It only cost $22 million to make, but it might not even get that far.
- Alien: Covenant Comparisons
- Everything, Everything Comparisons
- Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul Comparisons
Filed under: Weekend Wrap-up, Alien: Covenant, King Arthur: Legend of the Sword, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2, The Fate of the Furious, Snatched, Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul, Everything, Everything, Alien, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Marvel Cinematic Universe