by Nathaniel R
| Holiday Weekend Box Office Estimates (May 25th-27th) |
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| W I D E 800+ screens |
L I M I T E D excluding prev. wide |
 Solo: A Star Wars Story |
 Disobedience |
| 1.🔺Solo $83 *NEW* REVIEW, BEHIND THE SCENES |
1. 🔺 RBG $1.1 on 415 screens (cum. $5.6) REVIEW |
| 2. Deadpool 2 $42.7 (cum. $207.4) | 2. Disobedience $368k on 224 screens (cum. $2.5) REVIEW |
| 3. Avengers Infinity War $16.4 (cum. $621.6) REVIEW |
3. 🔺 Pope Francis - A Man of His Word $290k on 385 screens (cum. $1) |
| 4. Book Club $9.4 (cum. $31.8) REVIEW |
4. 🔺 First Reformed $282k on 29 screens (cum. $425k) REVIEW |
| 5. Life of the Party $5.1 (cum. $39.1) |
5. 🔺 How Long Will I Love U $210k on 23 screens *NEW* |
These numbers will go up given that this weekend is extra long and there's still Memorial Day monday in which families are free to see movies if they'd like. But the numbers won't go high enough for Disney's taste. Now, $83 million in one weekend is nothing to scoff at but for a film within the Star Wars saga it's surprisingly low. Lots more on multiple films after the jump...
Of the four modern Star Wars films, Solo is looking at the smallest opening weekend by a gigantic margin, only about half of Rogue One's take for instance! This does not bode well for Disney's plans to give us as many Star Wars films, as say, superhero films (a wider genre after all). Too much of a good thing is still too much apparently. It's harder to achieve event status when you're a common and expected thing.
In other box office news, though Infinity War is holding well, it's looking unlikely that it can surpass Black Panther's astonishing domestic gross given that it's $77 million behind at the moment in its 5th weekend. When 2018 ends Black Panther will likely retain #1 of the year honors Stateside while Infinity War will have to settle for that title globally (where it's handily outgrossed Black Panther and might become the fourth film in history to grab $2 billion during its theatrical run -- the others being Avatar, Titanic, and The Force Awakens). Black Panther stayed in the top ten for an incredible 13 weeks this year though it's finally closing out its run soon.
In the counter-programming world, the "legends only" Book Club is doing well, with the smallest percentage drop among wide releases. People like it! Of the female-led comedies this year, I Feel Pretty is at the top of the mountain (or hill, I suppose, since none have been smash hits) with $47 million but Book Club could surpass it if it develops longer legs. Adult appeal movies thankfully dont die after opening weekend because, true story, it takes longer for that audience to feel like leaving the house. (FYI: Unless you count Deadpool 2 which really belongs to the superhero genre, Game Night is 2018's top grossing comedy with a $68 million gross)
 Breaking In |
 Let the Sunshine In |
| 6. Breaking In $4 (cum. $35.6) REVIEW | 6. 🔺 The Rider $184k on 107 screens (cum. $1.3) REVIEW |
| 7. Show Dogs $3 (cum. $10.6) | 7. 🔺 Beast $175k on 93 screens (cum. $407k) |
| 8. Overboard $3 (cum. $41.4) |
8. 🔺 The Seagull $116k on 29 screens (cum. $216k) REVIEW |
| 9. A Quiet Place $2.2 (cum. $179.9) REVIEW, 2ND OPINION, SCREENPLAY | 9. 🔺 Let the Sunshine In $104k on 69 screens (cum. $540k) REVIEW |
| 10. Rampage $802k (cum. $93.8) | 10.🔺 On Chesil Beach $91k on 25 screens (cum. $146k) |
| 🔺 = new or expanding its theater count numbers (in millions unless otherwise noted) from box office mojo |
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Not much has changed at the arthouses where Disobedience, RBG, and The Rider continue to have strong sleeper hit runs. This week's new but very low profile limited releases did not perform well with John Cameron Mitchell's How to Talk to Girls at Parties, Bruce La Bruce's The Misandrists, the indie Who We Are Now, and the biopic Mary Shelley all opening to tiny grosses at only one or two theaters each.
Perhaps the biggest and least reported news is that Juliette Binoche has her first foreign language hit in quite some time. Let the Sunshine In has grossed over half a million after its first month in theaters and it's still expanding! It's actually now Claire Denis's second biggest US success (after her debut film Chocolat released in 1989) having outpaced her other most-celebrated imports White Material starring Isabelle Huppert and Denis's best film (imho) Beau Travail during their semi-successful arthouse releases in 2010 and 2000 respectively.
WHAT DID YOU SEE THIS WEEKEND?
I caught How to Talk to Girls at Parties (so worth seeing haters be damned-- sorry, not sorry!). I also finally made it to Disobedience since there's just one month to do all those catch up screenings before we hit our "halfway mark best of the year thus far" articles. Those three actors (Rachel Weisz, Rachel McAdams, and the perpetually undervalued Alessandro Nivola) were all really selling it, weren't they?!