As expected, dismal reviews couldn't counteract three years of hype and anticipation, as audiences flocked to see BvS this Easter weekend, giving it a record-breaking 166 million debut. That's the biggest opening for a March release ever, passing the record set by the first Hunger Games, and WB's second biggest opening ever, falling short of the debut of the last Harry Potter film. There are a couple of interesting tidbits in there though. First of all, the movie got a "B" Cinemascore, which is not good, and quite rare for a comic book or action movie, and second, it had the biggest ever drop from Friday to Sunday for an opening weekend. So that means word of mouth kinda sucks, and this could be in for a very steep drop next week, similar to Man of Steel's three years ago. Not that it matter too much, since the movie did gangbusters overseas and opened with a global gross of 424 million, already halfway to the 800 million it needs just to break even. If the movie does suffer a massive dropoff next weekend, it looks like overseas audiences will come to the rescue. Unfortunately for the rest of us, who'd prefer hack director Zack Snyder jettisoned from this universe as soon as possible.
The holdovers were filled out by Zootopia, which earned another 23 million and has now grossed 240 million domestically and is very close to 700 million globally, My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2, which actually did better than expected with 18 million, and Allegiant and Miracles From Heaven, which tied with about 9.5 million each. That's pretty bad for Allegiant, which totally collapsed in week two, but good for Miracles, which held strong over the holiday.
Top 5:
- Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice- 166.1 million
- Zootopia- 23.1 million
- My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2- 18.1 million
- The Divergent Series: Allegiant- 9.5 million
- Miracles From Heaven- 9.5 million
A possible bright spot for the run of BvS is the fact that it has little to no competition for a while. The next big movie on the horizon is Disney's The Jungle Book, which isn't until April 15th, so that gives it some breathing room. Next week it's Melissa McCarthy's The Boss and the action movie Hardcore Henry, which probably won't cut into its potential audience too much. Still, I'm curious to see how it fares when toxic word of mouth kicks in. See you then.
