Mother's Day Weekend Box Office

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY y'all. Are you taking your mom to the movies? Does your mom even go to movies? (My mom does not unless I'm visiting her so it happens about once a year).

In its second week Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2 dipped below 50% but that's par for the course for blockbusters which are super frontloaded now. It still handily took the weekend making more than the two new wide releases combined (Snatched and King Arthur). In limited release the top new films were Lowriders (starring Demian Bichir and Eva Longoria) with a good per screen average and the sniper drama The Wall which risked a nearly wide opening to uncertain results. We'll see how word of mouth goes. 

Weekend Box Office (Date)
W I D E	L I M I T E D
1. GUARDIANS VOL. 2 $63 (cum. $246.1) REVIEW	1. 🔺 LOWRIDERS $2.4 NEW (295 screens)
2.🔺 SNATCHED $17.5 NEW REVIEW	2. BAAHUBALI 2 $1.5 (374 screens) (cum. $18.9)
3.🔺 KING ARTHUR $14.7 NEW REVIEW	3. 🔺 THE WALL $891k NEW (541 screens)
4. FATE OF FURIOUS $5.3 (cum. $215) FRANCHISE RANK	4. NORMAN $409k (153 screens) (cum. $1.6)
5. BOSS BABY $4.6 (cum. $162.3) REVIEW	5. THEIR FINEST $290k (258 screens | cum. $2.9)
6. BEAUTY & THE BEAST $3.8 (cum. $493.1) REVIEW | SCORE	6. SLEIGHT $285k (364 screens) (cum. $3.6)
7. HOW TO BE A LATIN LOVER  $3.7 (cum. $26.1)	7. THE DINNER $245k (429 screens) (cum. $1.1)
8. THE CIRCLE $1.7 (cum. $18.9) REVIEW	8. 🔺  A QUIET PASSION $199k (116 screens | cum. $766k)
9. GIFTED $1.3 (cum. $21.4)	9. 🔺 THE LOVERS $140k (23 screens) (cum. $229k) REVIEW
10. SMURFS: LOST VILLAGE $1.1 (cum. $42.1)	10. COLOSSAL $115k (160 screens) (cum. $2.7) REVIEW
11. GOING IN STYLE $1.0 (cum. $42.3)	11.🔺 PARIS CAN WAIT $101k NEW (4 screens)
12. BORN IN CHINA $820k (cum. $12.3)	12. 🔺 CHUCK $79k (39 screens) (cum. $121k) REVIEW
🔺 = new or added screens numbers from box office mojo

The Lovers and Chuck, two Tribeca debuts which went immediately to theaters last weekend after the festival, charted after adding theaters this weekend. Check out the reviews in case you missed 'em linked in the chart above.

What did you see this weekend? 

Arthouse Box Office... Go see "The Lovers"

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (reviewed) opened huge as expected, and is now #2 in the Marvel Cinematic Universe in terms of this highly specific metric: Most box office improvement over the opening of the first film. Number 1 in this regard is still Captain America Winter Soldier. With the mainstream box office being totally dominated by two franchises featuring action heroes of scant relation deploying the word "family" as frequently as rounds of ammo, let's turn our attention to the films in limited release. Richard Gere is the unexpected leader with not one but two films (The Dinner and Norman) in the top five.

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Box Office For Those Who Can Read...

by Nathaniel R

Since this weekend's box office results are just too dull to report on (April has been seriously lacking in new mainstream movies of worth) let's swerve over to the arthouse for this weekend's box office chart. And this gives us an excuse to talk about the the underdiscussed auteur François Ozon, too. D'accord? Which foreign language films have been most popular with US moviegoers in the first third of the year?

TOP FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILMS RELEASED IN 2017
(numbers as of April 30th, some of these are still in theaters)

01 Baahubali 2: The Conclusion (India) $10.1
A sequel to the 2015 epic about ancient India. 

02 Your Name (Japan) $4.2
Many people thought this should have been nominated for the animation feature Oscar last year -- from my understanding it's being shown in both English dub and in subtitled versions though I'm not 100% confident about this understanding.

⇱ 03 Raees (India) $3.2
Shah Rukh Khan continues to be a very reliable Bollywood draw. His latest is about a bootlegger in Guajarat...

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What did you see this weekend? I caught a masterpiece!

This weekend saw several new films hitting theaters including the trashy Unforgettable (reviewed), the epic The Promise, and Ben Wheatley's Free Fire (reviewed). Apart from the Disney Nature documentary Born in China and the almost-wide expansion of last week's newbie The Lost City of Z, none made much of an impact with moviegoers, as the holdovers just won't quit filling theaters. Boss Baby and Going in Style, for example, only dropped 20% in their 4th and 3rd weekends respectively.

I spent the weekend hitting the Tribeca Film Festival (our reviews have already begun) but the highlight by far was the rare opportunity to see Lina Wertmüller's Seven Beauties (1975) which is best known to Oscar buffs as the first instance of a woman being nominated for Best Director. The film was more amazing than I was prepared for. We're talking a tonally daring, politically charged, sexually crazed, harrowing and hilarious World War II movie. Most movies don't even have 10% of its verve and personality. I was riveted from the first frame to the last and if you ever have a chance to see it (or live in NYC) you'd be insane to pass it up. I'm going to try to hit at least one or two more Wertmüller movies while the series is running at NYC's newly renovated Quad cinema. 

What did you see this weekend? 

TOP WIDE (800+ theaters)
01 Fate of the Furious $38.6 (cum. $163.5) Ranking the Franchise
02 Boss Baby $12.7 (cum. $136.9) Review
03 Beauty & the Beast $9.9 (cum. $471) Review
04 Born in China $5.1 NEW
05 Going in Style $5 (cum. $31.7) 

TOP LIMITED 
01 The Lost City of Z $2.1 (cum. $2.2) 614 screens Review 
02 Colossal $584k (cum. $1.3) 224 screens Review
03 Their Finest $555k (cum. $1.1) 176 screens
04 Norman $136k (cum. $272k) 18 screens
05 T2 Trainspotting $80k (cum. $2.2) 160 screens

Box Office: "Get Out" Won't and "Fate of the Furious" Grows

Get Out, now in its 8th weekend, just refuses to enter the sunken place i.e. the lower echelons of the box office charts. That's a long run already with enormous returns ($183 million worldwide on a $4.5 million budget? It's what all scrappy films dream of!)

But the story of the weekend was the return of the Fast and Furious franchise with film #8 The Fate of the Furious. It grossed an estimated $100 million out of the gate which is significantly lower than its previous Paul Walker farewell entry. But don't cry for it. $100 is still a big big opening weekend and its foreign gross quadruples the American haul so it's already broke a half billion in that first weekend. If the estimates hold it will just barely edge out The Force Awakens as the biggest global opening ever.  I'll just be over hear pretending that that $100 million in the US is audience excitement about Charlize Theron wreaking havoc because we love that badass bitch. The charts are after the jump...

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