After a phenomenal opening weekend and stellar word-of-mouth, it’s no shock that Disney’s live-action ‘Beauty and the Beast‘ dominated the box office for a second weekend. The all-star spectacular headed up by Emma Watson and Dan Stevens and including Ian McKellan, Ewan McGregor, and Emma Thompson has neared $700 million worldwide. In the U.S., it racked up an impressive additional $91M, the fourth best second weekend of all time, trailing ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’, ‘Jurassic World’ and the first ‘Avengers’.
‘Beauty and the Beast’ also helped in large part to contribute to the most successful March in box office history– the first time movies have earned over $1 billion in this month. Of course, this film had help from strong showers like ‘Kong: Skull Island’ (#3 this week), ‘Logan’ (#5) and newcomer ‘Saban’s Power Rangers’ (#2, but more on that in a sec) as well as other strong performers like the acclaimed thriller ‘Get Out’ and ‘The LEGO Batman Movie’. (Last year set a record with $948.8M earned, mostly due to Disney’s ‘Zootopia’ and Warner Brother’s ‘Batman V Superman’.)
Lionsgate’s ‘Saban’s Power Rangers’ wasn’t mighty enough to dethrone ‘B&B’ but it still did pretty darn well, earning $41.6M in its opening weekend. The film benefits from appealing to multiple generations of fans. ‘Power Rangers’ is being marketed strongly to kids, but of course it is drawing in (mostly male) Millennials that grew up with the TV franchise.
Critics hate this movie (46% on Rotten Tomatoes) but audiences are eating it up with A to A+ CinemaScore ratings. (I’m not sure what movie THEY watched… this was a C at best and I’m a Power Rangers superfan.)
The film teased a sequel, which at this point is a given, but hopefully ‘Power Rangers’ can beat the curse that took down ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’. The superior sequel failed to make as much as the weaker first film, sinking the franchise.
On the plus side, this movie helps Lionsgate make things up to foreign distributors who were saddled with the hot messes of ‘Gods of Egypt’ and ‘The Divergent Saga: Allegiant’ last year.
Getting its butt beat is the sci-fi thriller ‘Life‘ with Jake Gyllenhaal and Ryan Reynolds. Apparently, people thought this looked too much like the ‘Alien’ franchise and didn’t bother taking this one in.
Here is the Top Five:
- Beauty and the Beast (Disney) – $91M
- Saban’s Power Rangers (Lionsgate) – $41.6M
- Kong: Skull Island (20th Century Fox/Legendary) – $14M
- Life (Skydance/Sony) – $12.2M
- Logan (20th Century Fox) – $10M
The biggest failure this week is ‘CHIPS’ written, directed by and starring Dax Sheppard. It appears that audiences are burned out on movie remakes of old TV shows and this was the scapegoat. Warner Brothers apparently smelled a flop and yanked promotion for this flick but for whatever reason thinks they can get people to pay $30 to stream it in two weeks. Lemme know how that goes.
Next week, Scarlett Johansson’s ‘Ghost In The Shell’ is gonna flop and there’s also the Alec Baldwin-voiced ‘The Boss Baby’ (which will probably also flop). So… ‘Beauty and the Beast’ should score #1 again. But check back yo see how things pan out.
Source: Deadline
