Box Office Report: 'Logan' Enjoys One of the Biggest R-rated Openings Ever

Here’s your estimated 3-day box office returns (new releases bolded):

1. Logan – $85.3 million ($85.3 million total)

2. Get Out – $26.1 million ($75.9 million total)

3. The Shack – $16.1 million ($16.1 million total)

4. The Lego Batman Movie – $11.6 million ($148.6 million total)

5. Before I Fall – $4.9 million ($4.9 million total)

6. John Wick: Chapter Two – $4.7 million ($82.8 million total)

7. Hidden Figures – $3.8 million ($158.7 million total)

8. The Great Wall – $3.5 million ($41.2 million total)

9. Fifty Shades Darker – $3.4 million ($109.9 million total)

10. La La Land – $2.9 million ($145.6 million total)

The Big Stories

The box office numbers are about to get exciting. Sure, we’ve had Lego Batman, Fifty Shades and other hits like Split, John Wick Chapter 2 and Get Out, but we’re into March now — a month when studios expect hits! This is the first of five weekends that will bring us Beauty and the Beast, Kong: Skull Island and The Boss Baby, hopeful breakouts like Life and CHiPs and hopeful-not-to-disappoint-too-much titles like Power Rangers and Ghost in the Shell. But those are just coming attractions. What we have this weekend is Logan. And it’s all you need right now.

Logan Has Fourth Best Opening Ever in March

James Mangold’s Logan is the first X-Men film featuring Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine to open outside of the summer. You will recall the success Fox had last year with Deadpool opening in February; the impetus for the greenlight that a Wolverine film could find success with an “R” rating. So let’s provide a little context.

Logan’s $85.3 million opening is less than the openings of X-Men: The Last Stand, Days of Future Past and X-Men United. Currently it is just above Origins: Wolverine’s $85 million and that is where Fox wants it with these estimates. But those films were “PG-13” and opened in May during the flurrious summer movie season. This is March, and in this month a $85 million opening is good enough for the fourth best start behind just Batman v Superman, The Hunger Games and 2010’s Alice in Wonderland. It is also (if estimates hold) the fifth best start for an “R”-rated film behind Deadpool, The Matrix Reloaded, American Sniper, The Hangover Part II, and ahead of  Fifty Shades of Grey and The Passion of the Christ.

As referenced earlier, Logan has a lot of competition on the horizon that could stunt its growth over the coming weeks, so let’s look at where it may stand as of this weekend. Last year’s X-Men: Apocalypse, despite the same “A-“ Cinemascore that Logan received, only managed a 2.36 multiple thanks to word-of-mouth led on by critics thrashing the film weeks ahead of its release with just a 48% at Rotten Tomatoes. That was a far cry from February’s Deadpool, which got a solid “A”, an 83% from critics and a healthy multiple of 2.74 which is pretty solid after a $132 million opening. (Only 8 of the 21 films with a stronger opening than Deadpool had a higher multiple.)

Now it should be noted that the X-Men films, which have grossed a combined $1.45 billion in the U.S. (Deadpool excluded) have not posted the greatest of multiples after their openings:

X-Men (2.88), X-Men: First Class (2.65), X-Men: Days of Future Past (2.57), X2: X-Men United (2.51), The Wolverine (2.49), X-Men: Apocalypse (2.36), X-Men: The Last Stand (2.28), X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2.11)

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Days of Future Past had the greatest critical support at Rotten Tomatoes with a 91% approval. Logan is currently at 94% and the word-of-mouth should extend beyond the mere fans of the character. It is a film that doesn’t need eight films of history and crossovers for someone new to enjoy it. But given the history, this gives Logan a first estimate range of anywhere between $179-246 million. Brett Ratner’s The Last Stand still shockingly holds the highest gross for a mainline X-Men film in the U.S. at $234 million. Neither of the stand-alone Wolverine films have cracked $180 in the U.S. or $415 million worldwide. Fox wisely produced this film at a bargain of just $97 million (before P&A) and with another $152 million in the bank already internationally, Logan could be in profit before its second weekend even begins.

The Shack Gets Off To a Good Start

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The supposed faith-based The Shack was delayed from release last November and put into this weekend. Looks like a pretty good move on Lionsgate’s part as the film began with $16.1 million, just a bit better than the $14.8 million that Miracles From Heaven started with on Wednesday, March 16, just over a week before Easter in 2016.

Heaven is for Real opened on the Wednesday before Easter in 2014 and went on to a $22.5 million start plus an additional $7 million on the two days before the weekend. So why didn’t Lionsgate open The Shack mid-week like those films considering that it was actually ASH WEDNESDAY!? Someone may have missed the calendar there. The $20 million budgeted film may be able to stretch interest in its base between now and Easter on Apr. 16. Critics are generally not on board with these types of films (Heaven & Miracles received scores of 46% & 47% while they got Cinemscores of “A” and “A+.”) The Shack also received a solid “A” from audiences, but a horrendous 13% from critics.

GET OUT!!!

Remember last week’s first estimate of Get Out that put it somewhere between $85-91 million. Yeah, forget about it. Destroy it, burn it, nuke it. The $26 million it grossed in weekend two puts the film at nearly $76 million in just 10 days. That is nearly where Split was at the same point ($77.3 million) and it now may be looking to surpass the current $131+ million of Shyamalan’s film. Is anyone having a better year than Blumhouse at the moment? The extraordinary part isn’t even how big a hit this film is (which is indeed extraordinary) but in the seemingly minute detail of its second week drop.

Get Out fell just 21%. That’s a horror film, mind you. Digging through the archives you would have to look at 2002’s The Ring, which improved 23% in its second weekend (after a $15 million start) or The Sixth Sense, which dropped a mere 3.4% (after a $26.6 million start), to show how rare it is for a horror film to keep butts in the seats. Sure, the first Paranormal Activity fell 22% after its sixth week expansion from 1,945 to 2,404 theaters. The Devil’s Advocate dropped 16% and The Others fell 22.6%, but those were after openings between $12-15 million. Not the $33.3 million that Get Out finalized last weekend after initial estimates between $30-31 million. You’d have to look at Robert Zemeckis’ What Lies Beneath, which had a 23% drop after a $29 million opening, to find another comparable title to what both The Sixth Sense and Get Out have accomplished.

Tales of the Top Ten

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The Lego Batman Movie is currently the highest-grossing film of 2017 in the U.S. (Believe it or not, Fifty Shades Darker is the highest worldwide followed by xXx: The Return of Xander Cage.) But it is also currently $60 million off the pace of The Lego Movie and shows no clear path to $200 million now. The low-end first estimate was placed at $176 million and that seems to be the goal at the moment.

Open Road would kill to see numbers like those. Heck, they’d kill to see one of their films gross $65 million; a number that has eluded them to date. Last week they finally got Collide out in over 2,000 theaters. Not that anyone noticed as it’s grossed a total of $2.2 million to date and lost half its theaters this weekend. This week their entry was the reasonably well-received young adult adaptation, Before I Fall. The Ry Russo-Young film premiered at Sundance and has managed a 71% at Rotten Tomatoes, but just a “B” Cinemascore. The $5 million budgeted film is hardly a financial disaster even with a $4.9 million start but this is a studio on the ropes that is pinning all its hopes this August on a sequel to The Nut Job, its highest-grossing film to date.

Lionsgate certainly has nothing to brag about with the $6.3 million that Rock Dog has made so far, but with The Shack perhaps looking at profit and the nearly $375 million worldwide gross of six-(almost seven)-time Oscar-winner La La Land, they are in a pretty decent place right now.

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Moonlight, by the way, was re-introduced to over 1,500 theaters this weekend and grossed an additional $2.2 million to drive its total to over $25 million. The film is also available on Blu-ray & DVD now.

Back to Lionsgate though, John Wick: Chapter Two is also helping push that winning streak narrative with over $133 million worldwide. It’s not a huge hit right now, but its enough to keep its franchise hopes alive. The studio is hoping Power Rangers can do the same.

Between Split, Fifty Shades Darker, Get Out and even A Dog’s Purpose, Universal is having one heck of a year. Then there’s that “Chinese ponytail movie” (as Jimmy Kimmel called The Great Wall) that just sucks out some of the thrill for the studio. The film may have grossed over $269 million overseas but it’s not going to cross $50 million in the U.S. and is at the moment looking at a loss of over $100 million.

Fox Searchlight had no success this weekend with the release of the Anna Kendrick comedy, Table 19, in only 868 theaters. It grossed just $1.5 million which is less than what Black Swan started with in just 18 theaters back in 2010. Thankfully for Big Fox, Hidden Figures continues to go nowhere but up. It will have grossed over $160 million by the time it leaves theaters. In other words, more than X-Men, X-Men: Apocalypse, X-Men: First Class and The Wolverine, proving that sometimes real superheroes can indeed best the made-up ones.

– Erik Childress can be heard each week evaluating box office on WGN Radio with Nick Digilio as well as on Business First AM with Angela Miles and his Movie Madness Podcast.

[box office figures via Box Office Mojo]

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