zootopia

‘Deadpool’ raked in an additional $16.4 million in its fourth weekend, bringing its total gross to $311M (domestic), making it the third highest-grossing R-rated movie of all time, behind ‘The Passion of the Christ’ ($370M) and ‘American Sniper’ ($350M).  But after three weeks at #1, the film finally slipped to #3.

The top spot this week went to the new Disney juggernaut ‘Zootopia’ which scored $73M, making it the biggest non-Pixar Disney animated opening of all time, besting ‘Big Hero 6”s 2014 opening of $56M.  It’s particularly impressive that ‘Zootopia’ opened outside of the traditional Disney stomping grounds of the summer and holidays and that the movie is a completely original concept, not based on an existing story or a sequel.  Analysts are predicting that this film should continue performing well over the next few weeks as schools enter the spring break cycle, as it faces no other family movie competition.  (Disney’s live action ‘The Jungle Book’ arrives on April 15th.)

Gerard Butler’s second starring movie in two weeks, ‘London Has Fallen’ greatly outperformed last week’s ‘Gods of Egypt’.  ‘London’ took in $21.7M, which was strong but couldn’t come close to ‘Zootopia”s gross.  ‘London”s average audience was older males, an audience that doesn’t typically turn out on opening weekends, so once again, ‘London’ is predicted to hold up well over the next few weeks.

Falling well short of predictions was the Tina Fey-starring comedy ‘Whiskey Tango Foxtrot’, which took in $7.6M whereas it was expected to do between $10-12M.  Some are blaming the film’s political overtones, which may have been too much considering the Presidential race’s current media over-saturation.

Here are the numbers:

  1. Zootopia (Disney) – $73M
  2. London Has Fallen (Focus) – $21.7M
  3. Deadpool (20th Century Fox) – $16.4M
  4. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot (Paramount) – $7.6M
  5. Gods of Egypt (Lionsgate) – $5M

‘Gods of Egypt’ held onto the Top Five, but with a 63% drop from last week, that should be its last hurrah.

Next week’s results are hard to predict.  Perhaps the biggest opening is ’10 Cloverfield Lane’ but considering that no one can tell what this movie is about based on the cryptic trailers, it doesn’t have the loudest buzz.  And the 2008 film ‘Cloverfield’ only generated lukewarm reaction from viewers; no one was really clamoring for another movie in this series, even one that doesn’t appear to have anything to do with the first.

A dark horse contender is the African American romantic comedy ‘The Perfect Match’, which could score by connecting to an under-served audience, older African American women.

Check back and see how these newcomers do.  Can they pose a threat to this week’s champs?

Sources: Cinema Blend, Deadline