Did you see The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part this weekend? It's actually the fourth animated LEGO feature, the first becoming an unexpected blockbuster five years ago... But returns have been diminishing so perhaps they've overestimated the demand with their intense supply?
| Weekend Box Office Estimates February 8th-10th (ESTIMATES) 🔺 = New or Expanded Theater Count / ★= Recommended |
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| W I D E 800+ screens |
PLATFORM / LIMITED excluding prev. wide |
 Lego Movie Part 2 |
 Oscar Shorts Program |
| 1 🔺 The LEGO Movie Part 2 $34.4 *NEW* |
1🔺 Oscar Nominated Short Films $912k *NEW* Oscar Chart ★ |
| 2 🔺 What Men Want $19 *NEW* |
2🔺 Cold War $500k (cum. $2.8) Review, ASC Winner, Biggest Foreign Hits ★ |
| 3 🔺 Cold Pursuit $10.8 *NEW* |
3 Free Solo $307k (cum. $15.9) Review, Biggest Doc Hits ★ |
| 4 The Upside $7.2 (cum. $85.8) Review, Podcast |
4 Ek Ladki Ko Dekha $250k (cum. $1.0) |
| 5 Glass $6.4 (cum. $98.4) Review |
5🔺 Capernaum $140k (cum. $734k) Interview, Podcast, Foreign Film Nominee ★ |
...but returns have been diminishing so perhaps they've overestimated the demand with their intense supply?
What Men Want, savaged by critics, and Cold Pursuit, perhaps thrown off by the Liam Neeson controversy, did okay but will word of mouth be there? The big story, instead is the continued great holds for crowd pleasers The Upside and Green Book, which are both off less than 20% in their 5th and 13th weekends respectively which is quite rare for wide releases.
In other news Cold War is looking like it will easily pass the Oscar-winning Ida's gross, to become the biggest Polish hit in quite some time at the arthouse. Its Oscar competitor Lebanon's Capernaum, is already Nadine Labaki's second biggest hit in the states (after her debut film Caramel) and looks likely to cross the $1 million mark in a week or two. In other words this is an unusually popular year for the foreign film category as you can see on our massive box office chart of the past 18 years of that category.
Struggling for attention this week was the long delayed release of Everybody Knows, Asghar Farhadi's latest starring Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem which earned $75,000 at four theaters.
FINALLY we have to note that the annual theatrical package of Oscar nominated shorts (split into four programs, two for the doc shorts since they're always long) did nearly a million in its first weekend. This has become a popular tradition each year. Why can't the Academy see that the answer to making the below the line categories more popular is to invest in audience outreach and inclusion in all categories; this program has definitely upped the profile of these categories.