With pretty much every other studio staying far, far away, even they knew there was no sense competing with the Disney machine, leaving the mouse house wide open to have a fantastic weekend.
The studio’s live-action remake of “Beauty And The Beast” hauled in an astounding $170 million domestic, proving that nostalgia, at least for this property, goes a long, long way. The figure makes the fairy tale the seventh-highest domestic opening of all time, besting “Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows: Part 2,”and falling just shy of “Iron Man 3.” It’s also obviously the best launch of any of Disney’s reboots, and shows that while a small corner of the internet might complain about their childhoods being ruined, the studio is finding a whole new generation of viewers to connect with (plus plenty whose memories aren’t threatened by these movies existing). Internationally, ‘Beast’ also did gangbusters, grabbing another $180 million, bringing the total weekend haul to $350 million. “Beauty And The Beast” is easily looking at $400 million domestic by the time it wraps up, and the only question is whether or not it’ll break the billion-dollar barrier globally.
READ MORE: ‘Beauty And The Beast’ Is An Uninspired Monstrosity Of Bombast & Melodrama [Review]
Elsewhere, it was pretty quiet this weekend, though Blumhouse Tilt tried some counter-programming with the horror “The Belko Experiment.” The movie founds its core audience with $4 million, and with a budget of $5 million, it’ll wind up turning a small profit, and likely pad out the bottom line on VOD. It’s not a huge victory, but I don’t think anybody was expecting a huge result here.
In limited release, “T2 Trainspotting” hasn’t missed a beat in two decades. The arthouse sequel earned $180,000 on five screens, with a per-screen average of $36,000. Back in 1996, the original launched on eight screens taking in $262,673 for a per-screen-average of $32,834. Sony will be slowly expanding the sequel in the coming weeks, and whether or not it matches the $16 million total of its predecessor remains to be seen, but it’s off to a good start.
Meanwhile, Terrence Malick can’t seem to find an audience. Despite a starry cast including Ryan Gosling, Rooney Mara, Michael Fassbender, Natalie Portman, and Cate Blanchett, a splashy SXSW premiere, and even a rare public Q&A by the director, “Song To Song” continues the director’s floundering ways at the box office. The movie brought in $53,945 on four screens for a per-screen average of $13,486. It’s the worst debut of any of the director’s recent narrative films (documentary “Voyage Of Time: The IMAX Experience” actually did even worse, bringing in about the same amount, but on over three times as many screens) and with Malick’s WWII picture “Radegund” on the horizon, featuring mostly arthouse stars, you can bet major American distributors are going to be staying far away unless the reviews are ecstatic.
1. “Beauty And The Beast” — $170 million
2. “Kong: Skull Island” — $28.8 million ($110.1 mil.)
3. “Logan” — $17.5 million ($184 mil.)
4. “Get Out” — $13.2 million ($133.1 mil.)
5. “The Shack” — $6.1 million ($42.6 mil.)
6. “The Lego Batman Movie” — $4.7 million ($167.4 mil.)
7. “The Belko Experiment” — $4 million
8. “Hidden Figures” — $1.5 million ($165.5 mil.)
9. “John Wick: Chapter Two” — $1.2 million ($89.7 mil.)
10. “Before I Fall” — $1 million ($11.2 mil.)