Weekend Box Office: Batman’s Not Dead

We knew that the second weekend for the DC Cinematic Universe’s big mash-up would tell how well (or poorly) the film will fare in the long run, and weekend estimates were all over the place. Luckily for Warner Bros., the final gross remained within predictions.

Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice‘ scored $52.3 million over its second week, bringing its domestic ten-day total up to $261.4 million. The 68.4% week-over-week drop may seem alarmingly steep, but when you take into account that last week’s debut numbers included a Thursday night preview (totaling $27.7 million) that couldn’t be counted towards second-week revenue, the fall isn’t as dramatic. If you remove Thursday’s preview totals from the opening weekend, the 62.1% decline is just a couple points off from last year’s ‘Avengers: Age of Ultron’ and other front-loaded comic book titles. Many box office headlines are going to read “Batman v. Superman Takes Second-Weekend Beating,” but that’s not quite the case. From some reason, it’s trendy for the media and critics to blast the picture, but audiences don’t agree. The movie’s Rotten Tomatoes score currently sits at a lousy 29% with critics, but the IMDb user score is a decent 7.3. The moral of the story is, don’t believe everything you read in the headlines. Many news stories are tearing Zack Snyder’s movie to shreds, but with a ten-day worldwide total of $682.8 million, it certainly isn’t a failure.

Despite two wide releases taking the stage, five-week-old ‘Zootopia‘ remained in second place. On top of that, it only fell 16.7% over last week. The additional $20 million brings its domestic total up to $275.9 million. With $511.7 million coming from international markets, it now has a worldwide total of $787.6 million.

My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2‘ collected $11.1 million, dropping a light 37.7% over last week’s premiere. The low-budget sequel isn’t even close to tracking with the success of its predecessor, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a success of its own. After ten days, the lightweight comedy has grossed $36.4 million domestically and $18.4 million from some overseas markets.

The first of the week’s new wide releases landed in the #4 spot. ‘God’s Not Dead 2‘ opened to $8.1 million from 2,419 locations. In 2014, the original ‘God’s Not Dead’ opened to $9.2 million from half as many locations and had long legs that carried the $2 million picture to a fantastic $60.7 million total domestic theatrical run. With the kicking off with a much weaker start, it’s not going to come close to matching the numbers of the first entry.

Fellow faith-based drama ‘Miracles from Heaven‘ came in just behind ‘God’s Not Dead 2’ and rounded out the Top 5. Dropping a slight 22% in its third week, Sony’s $13 million picture added $7.5 million to its run, which now stands with a domestic total of $46.8 million.

The second new wide release opened in the #8 spot. From 1,015 locations, ‘Meet the Blacks‘ – a weird comedy hybrid of ‘The Beverly Hillbillies’ and ‘The Purge’ – made $4 million. With a so-so per-screen average of $4,026, it’s not exactly a hit, but the studio hasn’t released budget details. Considering the lack of an advertising campaign and the cheap cast, I’d guess that the studio probably didn’t put much into it.

Richard Linklater’s unofficial ‘Dazed and Confused’ sequel had a solid 19-screen start. ‘Everybody Wants Some!!‘ earned $323,000, for a per-screen average of $17,000. Paramount has already announced plans to expand the film in the coming weeks.

On a per-screen basis, Don Cheadle’s feature directorial debut played even stronger. With Cheadle also starring, the Miles Davis bio-pic ‘Miles Ahead‘ grossed $122,751 from just four locations, giving it a $30,688 per-screen average. Sony Pictures Classics has yet to reveal the plans for its expansion.

Warner Bros. expanded Jeff Nichols’ acclaimed sci-fi drama ‘Midnight Special‘ from five to 58 screens, which resulted in a $581,000 weekend and a per-screen average of $10,017. The studio will expand it much wider this weekend, so that’s exactly where I’ll be on Friday night.

Top 10:

1. ‘Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice’ (Warner Bros.) – $52,385,000

2. ‘Zootopia’ (Buena Vista) – $20,000,000

3. ‘My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2’ (Universal) – $11,130,000

4. ‘God’s Not Dead 2’ (Pure Flix) – $8,104,321

5. ‘Miracles from Heaven’ (TriStar) – $7,550,000

6. ‘The Divergent Series: Allegiant’ (Summit) – $5,725,000

7. ’10 Cloverfield Lane’ (Paramount) – $4,750,000

8. ‘Meet the Blacks’ (Freestyle) – $4,086,000

9. ‘Eye in the Sky’ (Bleecker) – $4,055,000

10. ‘Deadpool’ (Fox) – $3,500,000

22 comments

  1. NJScorpio

    So I was out with this chick, and we decided to go to the movies…I proposed ‘BvS’, and we both made a face. I said, “I head it was long and kinda bad.” She said she heard the same.

    She proposed we go see ‘Deadpool’, which she had seen already. I hadn’t, so we did that, and I’m sure we made the right choice.

    • Ryan

      I enjoyed the movie (as did most of my friends). I wish more people would just ignore the hate-hype, and decide for themselves

  2. Ryan

    How about that. A BvS’s boxoffice story that doesn’t resort to clickbait nonsense. I don’t understand the BvS Bashing bandwagon everyone seems to be on. This drop is pretty much the same as the final Harry Potter as well, but no one claimed that was a disaster.

    • NJScorpio

      I don’t think it is bashing.

      This movie is a pretty big deal, with a lot of hype leading up to it. There is also no denying that the movie is being received as, at best, average. It may deliver for what the fans want, but this is no ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ or ‘Iron Man’. This won’t bring new people into the fold, nor change the game for comic movies.

      With that….it still brought in a HUGE sum of money, because of the momentum such a big title has. I don’t want to totally call it hype, but more akin to a big name boxing match. People are excited just to see it happen, regardless of the conclusion. But, like highly promoted boxing matches, it can disappoint. Not be bad, but disappoint. Nobody would say, “Those guys forgot how to box! They were just slapping each other!” This movie is, from what I gather, not bad…but it is not what one would expect from such a match up.

      This leads to a drop off. These Nolany comic movies are dark and depressing…and if someone said that very dark, depressing movie, that is 2 hours and 30 minutes long, is overbloated and not very good…let’s just say I’m more likely to gamble on a 1 hour and 30 minute movie. After all, I know I’ll just be seeing this on Blu-Ray eventually, and pretty much everything has already been spoiled for me.

      So the things you are saying, it is not click bate or hate hype…these things happened, and they make sense how they happened.

      • Ryan

        you didn’t even see the movie…a lot of what you’re saying is based on what you’ve heard.
        I went a second time yesterday and brought my brother along. He was shocked by all the negative things he heard. He loved that it was more serious than the Marvel movies.

        Anyway…the WAY they are reporting the drop is negative click bait nonsense. There were a few huge movies (with good reviews) that had similar drops (like Deathly Hallows), but those movies didn’t get the kind of headlines we see for BvS (not counting here). I think a lot of people just want the film and Snyder to fail and won’t let anything slide like they do with Marvel

        • The difference between ‘BvS’ and ‘Deathly Hallows’ would be that ‘BvS’ is attempting to kick-off a multi-billion dollar universe of movies, whereas ‘Deathly Hallows’ was wrapping up a franchise that had already made billions. It’s a bigger deal for ‘BvS’ if we’re prognosticating what the future holds for the DC Universe movies if such drops become commonplace. Does the drop carry pessimism to the next movie? And so on.

        • NJScorpio

          “you didn’t even see the movie…a lot of what you’re saying is based on what you’ve heard”

          …which I’m posting to explain why I didn’t go to see it during the 2nd week, and, perhaps, why others didn’t as well, explaining the logical drop off.

  3. Chapz Kilud

    When is the last time movie this bad (29% RT) made so much money? It’s pretty bad alright. The story is terrible, and I don’t think the extended cut could help. I don’t think Christian Bale would have saved this movie either. There were few bright spots on the movie though, mostly Wonder Woman. Everybody cheered when she dropped into the fight with her theme song. I also thought Jeremy Irons was a good pick. I think it’s a decent start for DC movie. I can’t wait to see Wonder Woman stand alone movie. I didn’t think highly of the first Avenger movie, and I thought Iron Man 3 and Avengers 2 were both terrible. Most people won’t agree with me but I thought BvS was on the par with the first Avengers. I’ve heard Captain America Civil War was very bad. So maybe Marvel’s is going downhill whereas DC looks a bit more promising.

    All they have to do is get somebody to do a good storyline and spent time on character development. They spent more than 30 minutes on Batman’s childhood (which was slightly different than Bale’s Batman) and on Batman’s stupid dreams. His bizarre dreams did nothing to the story, while Martha’s grave did something, it could have been done a lot differently if all that did was buying some time for Superman before Batman was about to stab him. That was 30 minutes they could have used to do more with some characters.

  4. William Henley

    I am actually surprised GND2 was only a million shy of what the first movie made on opening weekend. These movies usually have a niche audience, and I am usually part of that niche. But the first God’s Not Dead movie was really not that good, even for faith-based films. It had a story that could carry the movie maybe half of its runtime, the ending was predictable, story was weak, etc. What the movie had going for it was a good marketing campaign, and it obviously made money. I just have no interest in seeing a sequel – I think the filmmakers would have done well to have named it ANYTHING else. If the story is even slightly similar to the first movie, then I have no interest in seeing it, and if its a different story, then the movie needs a different name.

    Still need to get out and see Batman v Superman – I am so busy now that I don’t have time to do hardly anything.

  5. Adam S

    I am so grateful someone finally said something good about BvS’ box office! It’s unbelievable to me how much hate this movie gets, particularly from people who haven’t even seen the movie. Everyone seems to ignore the fact that BvS has already surpassed the domestic box office total for Winter Soldier and will likely pass its global total within a week. That movie was also a sequel, came out around the same time of year and was a critical “darling.” I’m not going to apologize for liking my superhero movies dead serious and none of the other proponents of BvS should feel ashamed either because of some pathetic vocal minority.

  6. It doesn’t matter whether B v S was serious or not…it’s just not a very good movie. It’s not awful, but it’s not very good either. Onviously people on both sides of the debate are prone to hyperbolic statements, but when uou really look at it…B v S is just kind of mediocre.

  7. CC

    BvS needs to make $1.5 Billion to BREAK EVEN. it is not even there yet. I would call that a colossal failure.
    And its Friday-Friday dropoff was 81%.

    • I don’t know where you’re getting that number from. Most industry news sources are saying that the break-even number is $800 million, which the movie will certainly hit:

      http://variety.com/2016/film/news/wb-batman-v-superman-faces-high-expectations-1201729887/

      The studio has disputed that number and says it will turn a profit before then.

      The movie’s official production budget is $250 million. An $800 million gross is more than a 3x multiplier. Even for a movie as heavily advertised and hyped as this one, that should be more than enough to clear its promotion and distribution costs.

      Whether the studio will be happy with the movie just barely breaking even is of course another matter, but nobody’s going to lose money on this, especially not after video sales and ancillary income (action figures, lunchboxes, fast food tie-ins, etc.) are accounted for.

      • This movie has engendered a great deal of schadenfreude as people take delight in the prospect of it failing, but the truth of the matter is that it’s nowhere near a flop.

        • Deaditelord

          Yes, believe it or not, there are some of us crazies who actually think BvS was entertaining. Not perfect, but far better than the shit show critics and others are claiming.

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