Kung Fu Panda holds off Dune, while Arthur the King has already been overthrown.
Halfway though March, the month's box office can easily be divided into winners and losers. The winners are, to no one's surprise, the expensive, big studio IP cogs. The losers appear to be everything else.
Leading the box office for the second weekend in a row is Kung Fu Panda 4. The animated sequel brought in $30.2 million, for a ten-day total of $107.9 million, making it the 2nd member of the $100 million club for 2024. Its decline from last weekend is concerning, but as mentioned before, with no more family films out until May, it has the market pretty much to itself for weeks and weeks. In addition, it is still running well ahead of Pandas 2 & 3 in both overall gross and weekend grosses, and is barely behind the first film in terms of weekend grosses. 4 is at a disadvantage to the original, as that opened in early June, meaning that it was able to get far better weekday grosses than 4 can realistically hope for going forward. Still, this feels likely to finish as the second-highest grosser of the franchise, and has an outside shot at breaking $200 million.
The weekend after the Oscars, arguably the first genuine contender for next year's Oscars held up very well in its third week. Dune: Chapter Two came fairly close to stealing the top spot back from Panda, as Dune made $28.5 million, for a total of $204.7 million, becoming the first film of 2024 to hit the $200 million mark. It might make it to $300 million, though like Panda, breaking that next century mark is far from guaranteed.
After a mostly successful career as a leading man in theatrical films, Mark Wahlberg started making films destined for streaming premieres. Of the nine films he's made since 2020, five of them went straight to streaming. Part of that was because of the pandemic, but it doesn't help that of his four films, the only one that was an unqualified hit was Uncharted, and that was sold primarily as a Tom Holland vehicle as he was coming off of Spider-Man: No Way Home. We can add Arthur the King to the list of misfires. The drama, which stars Wahlberg as a endurance racer who adopts a stray dog that somehow is able to keep up with him and his teammates, opened to a mere $7.6 million, or roughly half of what Dog made two years ago (it also made about half of what Instant Family, Wahlberg's last non-Uncharted theatrical hit, opened to in November 2018). Unless word of mouth is sparkling for this, expect this one to have trouble barking above $25 million.
Imaginary, the latest offering from Blumhouse, had a surprisingly strong hold, falling only 44% to $5.6 million. It has a ten-day total of $19 million. This puts it about on par with where Blumhouse's January entry, Night Swim was after two weekends, and Imaginary actually did better than Swim's second weekend. Swim would finish at $32.5 million, and that seems like a reasonable final number for Imaginary, a sight better than its opening suggested.
On the other hand, religious drama Cabrini had a rather awful second weekend, falling over 60% to $2.8 million. It's ten-day total is $13 million. That's still a bit better than where the other religious drama in the marketplace, Ordinary Angels, was at after two weeks, but it's not great, either. Both films could finish around $20 million.
After opening in limited release last weekend, the neo-noir Love Lies Bleeding, starring Kristen Stewart as a gym manager who recruits her bodybuilding girlfriend to take out her sister's abusive husband, with predictably awful consequences, went wide to marginal-at-best results. The film took in $2.5 million for a ten-day total of $2.8 million. While reviews have been solid, it's hard to see this thriller, which also stars Jena Malone (as the sister), Dave Franco (as her husband), and Ed Harris (as Stewart's and Malone's father) getting above $10 million.
Upon its Valentine's Day release, Bob Marley: One Love looked certain to hit $100 million. It still can, but after its momentum slowed way down, it now looks like it will finish just below that number. The musical biopic earned $2.3 million for a total of $93.3 million. With screen counts likely about to dramatically fall, that last $6.7 million could be really tough to come by.
After screening at the Toronto Film Festival last fall, One Life, starring Anthony Hopkins in a biopic about Nicholas Winton, who was instrumental in saving hundreds of Jewish children in Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia, finally gets an American release, right after the conclusion of Oscar season. The drama, which also stars Helena Bonham Carter, Lena Olin, and Jonathan Pryce, got the exact time of respectable, if unenthusiastic, reviews you'd expect for a prestige drama released in mid-March, and will get a respectable, if unenthusiastic, box office run. It launched with an OK $1.7 million.
The satire The American Society of Magical Negroes, which stars Justice Smith and David Alan Grier, did not get good reviews or good word of mouth, so if you want to catch this one in the theater, you should probably do so quickly. It opened to $1.3 million.
Rounding out the Top Ten, the aforementioned Ordinary Angels could only come up with $0.9 million for the weekend. Its total stands at $18 million.
Outside the Top 10, Chinese comedy YOLO found its box office collapsing in its second weekend. Its ten-day total is $1.5 million. Oppenheimer, fresh off of its 7 Oscars, including Best Picture, jumped back into wide release, but didn't make much of an impact, grossing just $0.3 million. Then again, the film has been around since July and is widely available for home viewing now. Its total stands at $329.7 million.
This weekend's big opening is Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, the fourth entry in the original franchise, which sees the Spangler grandkids now in New York City, and having to team up with the OGs to battle a new monster who is threatening to put the Big Apple in the deep freeze. This should be an easy #1, with the big question whether it can beat the $44 million Ghostbusters: Afterlife opened to in November 2021. Also opening is Immaculate, starring Sylvia Sweeney as a nun who discovers that her new Italian convent is full of sinister secrets. This continues the trend of religious horror movies we've seen lately, including The Pope's Exorcist, The Nun II, and The Exorcist: Believer, and will continue in a couple of weeks with The First Omen. Could Ghostbusters break out and put up numbers close to what Kung Fu Panda debuted to? Or could this be the last call the franchise gets for a while? We'll find out next week.
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