A Quiet Place has been anything but quiet this weekend. The John Kraskinski-directed horror film debuted at No. 1 with an estimated $50 million including Thursday night previews, a huge sum that blasted past all expectations. That makes it an even bigger smash in its opening frame than last year’s blockbuster Get Out, which debuted to $33.3 million last February on its way to a $176 million domestic total.
Starring Krasinski and his real-life wife Emily Blunt, A Quiet Place went into the weekend with even the most bullish prognosticators pegging it in the mid-$30 million range. But with word-of-mouth hot following its SXSW debut and enthusiastic critics boosting its Rotten Tomatoes score to an impressive 97%, the spookfest managed to break out in a big way. This is additionally a major win for the film’s distributor Paramount, which has been struggling over the last several years thanks to high-profile underperformers like Annihilation, Downsizing and Ghost in the Shell, to name just a recent few.
Also making a splash this weekend was Universal’s Blockers, another buzzy title that made its debut at SXSW and similarly won over critics. With an estimated $21.4 million including Thursday night previews, the Leslie Mann-John Cena comedy did well enough for third place, even as A Quiet Place seems to have stolen away some of its audience by breaking out beyond the traditional horror crowd.
The good news for Blockers is that its opening is similar to the leggy hit Game Night, which debuted to $17 million back in February and has taken in over $67 million thus far. With similarly strong reviews and a likable cast, it could enjoy a comparable trajectory over the next several weeks. The audience for Blockers was almost evenly split between women and men (51% to 49%), while it skewed slightly older with 56% of the opening weekend crowd over the age of 25.
The weekend’s other two wide openers debuted to decidedly less-impressive numbers. First, Entertainment Studios’ Chappaquiddick came in at No. 6 with a so-so $6.2 million, which, while not great, is actually at the high end of expectations. The fact-based Ted Kennedy drama had mainly positive reviews (its Rotten Tomatoes score is a solid 80%), but it was up against two crowd-pleasers that also had the critics on their side, which likely siphoned off a portion of its intended audience. It was simply the wrong weekend for a period political drama to flourish; this one may have fared better in the fall, when audiences tend to gravitate towards prestige fare like this in the lead-up to awards season. Debuting in 1,560 locations, the per-theater average on this one was $3,974.
Debuting outside the Top 10 was Mirror and LD’s The Miracle Season, the fact-based drama about a high school volleyball team that simply couldn’t compete on a crowded box office court this weekend. With $4.1 million from 1,707 locations, the film had the worst reviews of this weekend’s new crop by far (though it has a solid “A” Cinemascore), and its inspirational story and lead performance from Oscar winner Helen Hunt simply couldn’t overcome that. It also didn’t help that the faith-based phenomenon I Can Only Imagine continued to corner the “inspirational drama” market in its fourth weekend in theaters.
Dropping one spot to second was last weekend’s champ Ready Player One, which held well in its sophomore frame with an estimated $25 million. That represents a drop of just 40% from its $41.7 million debut over the three-day period last weekend, giving the Steven Spielberg sci-fi a healthy $96.9 million after ten days in theaters. This one is following a similar trajectory to the director’s Minority Report from way back in 2002. The Tom Cruise sci-fi actioner opened to $35.6 million and dropped just under 40% in weekend two, finishing its run with $132 million domestically (albeit when ticket prices were considerably lower). Ready Player One seems primed to finish somewhere in that ballpark, though perhaps closer to $150-$160 million if it continues to hold well in the coming weeks.
Easing just one spot to fourth place, the unstoppable juggernaut Black Panther continued its record-breaking run this weekend with another $8.4 million. With $665.4 million in North America, the superhero blockbuster has now usurped Titanic to become the third highest-grossing film of all time domestically not adjusted for inflation. Only Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Avatar have made more.
Dropping three spots to fifth was Tyler Perry’s Acrimony, which took in another $8 million after debuting to a healthy $17.1 million last weekend. The psychological thriller starring Taraji P. Henson now has a total of $31.3 million after ten days, which is a good result for a film with a reported budget of just $20 million.
More to come…
The post ‘A Quiet Place’ Shouts with Huge $50M at No. 1; ‘Blockers’ Does Well with $21.4M in 3rd appeared first on BoxOffice Pro.
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