Weekend Box Office Round Up for Jun 1-3 (a look at why Solo is so low)

Good afternoon Disney friends,Dismiss 

The weekend after Memorial Day lived up to its normal weekend numbers and was off quite a bit from last weekend. Part of that is probably due to the fact that so many high school graduations are occurring. Even with the low weekend, Disney still held on to spots 1 and 4 with Solo: A Star Wars Story and Avengers: Infinity War respectively. Both films are expected to bring in double digit receipts from the weekend box office.

First to Solo. Estimates are for the film to bring in about $29 mil this weekend from the domestic markets. This film is doing poorly for one of the biggest franchises in movie history. There are probably 3 major reasons why this film is coming in so low (see what I did there.) 1. It was just to soon after Star Wars: The Last Jedi. When the original trilogy came out, films were released every 3 years (1977, 1980, and 1983.) That allowed for a build up of anticipation which just did not happen with this film since it has only 5 months since the last film in the franchise. 2. Deadpool 2 and Avengers are cutting into the market share. This weekend those 2 films combined ($33.6 mil) grossed more the Solo. Some of that money could possibly have gone to the Star Wars film. 3. Bad publicity about the film may have scared off some casual viewers. After the original filming had finished, there were concerns about the direction of the film which led to the firing of the original director and bringing in Opie (Ron Howard) to try to save the film. He did a fairly good job based upon the fact that the film is getting good reviews from critics and movie goers, but it just was not enough.

Next, Avengers is slowly moving in on the $2 bil worldwide mark. The film currently stands at $1,964,869,932. This weekend the film was able to pull in over $10 mil stateside for running domestic total of just shy of $643 mil. Even with schools getting out for the summer, with movies like Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom and Ant-Man and the Wasp hitting markets over the next month, it will be hard for Avengers to make to $700 mil (of course I could be horribly wrong on that prediction.)

Lastly, Black Panther crossed the $699 mil mark and has less than $900k to go to make it to the $700 mil mark. Again, this will depend on how well it can hold facing stiff competition to come.

I hope your upcoming week is magical.

Weekend Box Office Update--May 4-6

Good afternoon Disney friends,

The weekend numbers are in and Disney has broken more records. First, the House of Mouse made it to $3 bil for the worldwide market on May 5, which broke Disney's record previous record of making it to that mark by one day (2016.) Disney now has 17 out of the 34 films that were able to gross $1 bil from the worldwide market. 

In terms of Avengers: Infinity War, the film was able to gross $112.4 mil this weekend based on current estimates. The weekend gross gives the film the second highest second weekend only behind StaIr Wars: The Force Awakens. Again, it bears repeating that Avengers is pulling in its numbers on a week when most children are still in school. Star Wars second weekend fell on Christmas weekend. Looking at the worldwide box office, the film became the fastest film to $1 bil. This figure beats out Star Wars: The Force Awakens. The film still has China to come, which will occur on May 11. Iron Man and friends will have one more weekend at the top of the heap before Deadpool 2 opens on May 18 followed by Solo: A Star Wars Story which is slated to open the following weekend.

Speaking of Solo, the film is already outpacing Black Panther in tickets sales on Fandango. Some of the current projections and looking at a four day opening of around $170 mil. 

I hope you have a magical week.