Superbowl 49 came and went and “American Sniper” is still the top movie in America. By a landslide. Newcomers “Project Almanac” and “Black or White” combined would still be less than half of “American Sniper.” Almanac started out with a problem. It started production back when found-footage flicks were doing well. It was marketed hard, but it’s a found-footage movie about time traveling high school kids. It was dead on arrival, making only $8.5 million, luckily it has only a $12 million budget. I would bet they spent at least as much as the box office gross as they did on total marketing. This is the second lowest opening for a Michael Bay produced film.
“Black and White” was the other newcomer this weekend which was targeted at basically the reverse market of “Project Almanac.” It’s going to have a hard time holding onto screens as much bigger movies open over the next few weeks. It already did significantly worse than “Paddington” in its third week. It also barely beat out “The Boy Next Door” which fell a hard 60% in its second week.
Next week sees the much delayed “Seventh Son,” this film originally was set to release two years ago so it’s quality is really in question from the beginning. We will also see “Jupiter Ascending” and a new Spongebob movie. Next weekends Top 5 is anyones guess.
| Rank | Title | Studio | Weekend Gross | % Change | Total Gross | Week # | |||||
| 1 | American Sniper | WB | $31,850,000 | -50.7% | $248,942,000 | 6 | |||||
| 2 | Paddington | W/Dim. | $8,505,000 | -30.7% | $50,540,000 | 3 | |||||
| 3 | Project Almanac | Par. | $8,500,000 | – | $8,500,000 | 1 | |||||
| 4 | Black or White | Rela. | $6,456,000 | – | $6,456,000 | 1 | |||||
| 5 | The Boy Next Door | Uni. | $6,093,000 | -59.1% | $24,684,000 | 2 | |||||
A quick note on budgets and dollar figures:
Films making back their budgets is a good sign, but that is just the money to film. It doesn’t include distribution and marketing. Marketing can cost as much as a film. That big Superbowl spot is spendy. So take that into account when judging a film’s success. Hitting $100 million isn’t the same as it once was.
All dollar amounts in the top 5 come from estimates based on ticket sales unless noted otherwise. Occasionally this article will be published when actual results come out, which is usually late Monday afternoon. For more about this and other ins and outs of movie tracking click here.