by Nathaniel R
| Weekend Box Office (April 27th-29th) |
|
| W I D E 800+ screens |
L I M I T E D excluding prev. wide |
 Infinity War |
 Disobedience |
| 1. 🔺 Avengers: Infinity War $250 NEW |
1. Beirut $257k on 237 screens (cum. $4.5) |
| 2. A Quiet Place $10.6 (cum. $148.1) REVIEW, SECOND OPINION, SCREENPLAY | 2. 🔺 Disobedience $241k on 5 screens NEW REVIEW |
| 3. I Feel Pretty $8.1 (cum. $29.5) |
3. 🔺 Lean on Pete $240k on 167 screens (cum. $665k) REVIEW |
| 4. Rampage $7.1 (cum. $77.9) |
4. Death of Stalin $210k on 150 screens (cum. $347k) REVIEW |
| 5. Black Panther $4.3 (cum. $688) PODCAST |
5. 🔺 The Rider $188k on 37 screens (cum. $357k) REVIEW |
Avengers Infinity War is gigantic in just about every way and the audience responded in kind gifting it the biggest opening weekend of all time. Yes, even the super long awaited return of the Star Wars franchise The Force Awakens fell to Marvel Studio's magical gloved might... The studio is currently saying that Avengers beat the record by about $2 million dollars but Marvel tends to underestimate their opening weekends in a bit of a humble brag way so expect the margin to increase a bit.
Elsewhere at the multiplex...
 Ready Player One |
 Kings |
| 6. Super Troopers 2 $3.6 (cum. $22) | 6. 🔺 Kings $173k on 214 screens NEW REVIEW |
| 7. Truth or Dare $3.2 (cum. $35.3) | 7. 🔺 Finding Your Feet $123k on 102 screens (cum. $1.1) REVIEW |
| 8. Blockers $2.9 (cum. $53.2) |
8. The Leisure Seeker $104k on 117 screens (cum. $2.8) |
| 9. Ready Player One $2.4 (cum. $136) REVIEW | 9. 🔺 Grace Jones: Bloodlight... $41k on 19 screens (cum. $182k) REVIEW |
| 10. Traffik $1.6 (cum. $6.7) | 10. 🔺 Let the Sun Shine In $40k on 2 screens NEW REVIEW |
| 🔺 = new or expanding its theater count numbers (in millions unless otherwise noted) from box office mojo |
|
Well not much else was happening since Avengers took in more than 80% of all available box office dollars but at the arthouses Rachels Weisz and McAdams forbidden love affair in Disbodience had a strong opening with the second best per screen average after The Avengers albeit on only 5 screens. The weakest debut was the Halle Berry / Daniel Craig Los Angeles riots movie Kings which is, sadly, a terrible movie. I can't imagine what happened since the director's debut (Mustang) was so good it was Oscar nominated for best Foreign Language Film and made my personal top ten in its year.
Mostly it was a rough weekend for everyone but Marvel. Black Panther was buoyed by the incoming Marvel behemoth so it fell only an incredible 11% in its 11th weekend; as we suspected last week, some fans were doing a double feature. What this enormous weekend means for The Avengers overall gross remains to be seen. Since it's hard to imagine it having the staying power and repeat business of Black Panther (given that it's a less self-contained story, beginning in media res and ending on a cliffhanger) but at this point we expect it will end up as #3 of all time for Marvel after Black Panther and the original Avengers.
What did you see this week? I caught Avengers Infinity War (we'll discuss tomorrow) and a few Tribeca Festival films on which more soon as we finish our festival coverage.