In a battle of Empires, New handily defeats Frozen, and Godzilla x Kong dominates Easter weekend.
March weather is often described as coming in like a lion and out like a lamb. In terms of box office, however, March, at least this year, started and ended pretty much the exact same way: a Warner-produced sequel to a film whose immediate predecessor opened in 2021 and did only so-so business, relatively speaking, thanks to the pandemic and its day-and-day release on HBO Max opens north of $80 million. March 1 saw the release of Dune: Part Two, which took in $82.5 million that weekend, and March 31 was the end of the first weekend of Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, which made nearly as much.
The 5th entry in the MonsterVerse, GxK, as the poster calls it, opened to almost exactly $80 million. It reverses a trend where each movie in the series both opened and finished lower than its immediate predecessor, which in this case was Godzilla x Kong. Again, that film did excellent business for the time (it was the second film of the pandemic era to hit the $100 million mark), but GxK will blow it away, as it had the second-best opening in franchise history, topped only by the first Godzilla in 2014. Short of an epic collapse, this should be 2024's second $200 million grosser, which would mean it would pass Godzilla, which topped out at just over $200 million, as the franchise's top grosser. It might also be able to pass Dune to become the biggest film of 2024 so far. That's going to mean it needs legs more like Kong: Skull Island (quality-wise, still by far the best of the series) and less like the two stand-alone Godzilla movies. Luckily, April doesn't have even one guaranteed blockbuster, so GxK does have room to run.
The New Empire in town effectively put the Frozen one on ice, as Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire collapsed in its second weekend, falling to $15.8 million, a sharp 65% drop from its opening. After opening roughly evenly with Ghostbusters '16 and Ghostbusters: Afterlife, Frozen Empire, whose ten-day gross is $73.3 million, is now behind those titles by about $13 million. The lack of big titles in April does mean that Empire has time to stabilize, so it should still hit $100 million. However, it runs the very real risk of finishing below Ghostbusters 2's $112.5 million, which of course was earned in 1989 (adjusted for inflation, that's a roughly $290 million gross today).
The aforementioned Dune: Part Two continues to roll along, taking in $11.4 million for a total of $252.6 million. $300 million continues to look unlikely, but again, with April largely wide open, it might be able to pull it off.
In a similar situation is Kung Fu Panda 4, which picked up another $10.4 million for a gross of $151.8 million. While Dune's week-to-week drops have been smaller than Panda's, that could change as Dune will have to contend with GxK, not to mention having to deal with potential sleepers like Civil War and Abigail, while Panda will continue to have the family market all to itself. So while I expect both films to fall short of the next century mark, I think that Panda's odds of making it are slightly higher.
While the top two films take horror tropes (giant monsters and ghosts) and plug them into decidedly non-horror films, the actual horror films out decent, if hardly blockbuster, business. Immaculate, starring Sydney Sweeney, held up very well, falling only 39% to $3.3 million. It's ten-day total stands at $11.1 million. We'll see how it holds up this weekend, when there's another entry in the weirdly specific genre of "Horror movie about a young American nun discovering demonic evil at her Italian convent".
There's no reason that a relatively light drama can't do well at the box office. In the last couple of years, Dog, A Man Called Otto, Air, and The Boys in the Boat all found an audience. However, the people who turned out for those titles are not coming to see Arthur the King, which took in only $2.5 million for a total of $19.2 million. This one will likely do well on streaming, though.
Speaking of films that will likely find their audience on streaming, cult hit in the making Late Night With the Devil added 400 theaters and still fell 24% from last weekend, indicating that, despite all the buzz and great reviews, this one is simply not finding a big audience--at least in theaters. It took in $2.2 million for a ten-day total of $6.3 million.
Two Indian movies popped onto the lower rungs of the Top 10. At #8 is Tillu Square, a rather complicated-sounding crime comedy about a DJ blackmailed by a special forces agent into assassinating a crime lord. It took in $1.9 million.
One spot down is Crew, another crime comedy, this one about three flight attendants for a struggling airline who become gold smugglers. It brought in $1.5 million.
Rounding out the Top 10 is the month's most successful horror movie, Imaginary, which earned $1.4 million. The film has grossed $26.2 million and looks to be heading toward just under $30 million. Had either Immaculate (released by Neon) or Late Night With the Devil (released by IFC) been released by Lionsgate, their grosses would probably be pretty close to what Imaginary has earned.
Outside the Top 10, Liam Neeson's latest Old Man of Action thriller, the Ireland-set In the Land of Saints and Sinners, could only muster up an opening of $1 million. The second weekend of Luca, which brings to an end Disney's experiment in finally giving three pandemic-era Pixar movies belated theatrical releases, brings the film's 10-day total to $1.1 million.
This weekend sees two new films with nearly identical posters (a black silhouette in a red doorway, surrounded with black, with the film's title in red), both of which are likely competing for #2. The Omen, a portrait as the Antichrist as a young boy, was a big hit in 1976, and was followed by two sequels. Since then, there have been multiple attempts to restart the franchise, including a made-for-premium cable sequel in 1991, an unsuccessful TV pilot in 1995, a theatrical remake in 2006, and a short-lived, one season sequel series in 2016. Now, we have the prequel, The First Omen, starring the delightfully named Nell Tiger Free as a young American nun who discovers demonic evil at her Italian convent. We'll see if audiences avoid mixing this up with Immaculate. Meanwhile, Monkey Man marks the directorial debut of Dev Patel, who also stars as a man who gets bloody revenge on those he feel are responsible for his mother's death. Neither is likely to topple GxK, but we'll see if either--or both--will exceed expectation and prove to be a possible breakout hit. Will it be big monkey and little monkey in the Top 2, or will Catholic horror carry the day? We'll find out next week.
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