5/10/19 Weekend Actuals - Detective Pikachu posts a decent $54.3M opening, but falls below Avengers: Endgame
Most of the headlines this week will carry the phrase “biggest videogame adaptation launch in history” or some permutation of that, and while by that metric Detective Pikachu’s run is certainly a win, it is far from the whole picture (and no, I am not slightly somber because I personally overpredicted the film by a significant margin). Some context is required here: $54.4M is certainly the highest opening weekend for a videogame adaptation, but the previous high was set all the way back in 2001 by the Angeline Jolie starring Tomb Raider which had a $47.7M opening. Despite eighteen years of inflation and coming from a franchise that is more popular, Detective Pikachu still only improved by 13.8%, and was incapable of catching the top spot. While it’s very likely that Avengers: Endgame impacted the box office of the Pokemon film, we’ve seen multiple instances in the past of a family film thriving in the wake of a mega hit (think Inside Out opening to $90.4M in the second weekend of Jurassic World), so it’s more a case of audiences simply not having a huge interest in the film. And one particularly troubling statistic is the figure is significantly below the $90.0M adjusted 5-day cume of Pokemon: The First Movie. It would seem the general failure of other videogame adaptations along with the solid, but unspectacular led to less must-see interest than that 1999 film.
Keep in mind, I’m bringing this up largely because the conversation around Detective Pikachu seems to be both ignoring that context, along with the $150M price tag on the film when not accounting for marketing. There have been far worse performing $150M+ budgeted films in the past (including just this year), though, this still does not represent an untarnished win for Warner Bros. and Legendary Pictures. For the potential of a franchise to be more favorable, at least a 3.0 multiplier for a $160M domestic gross, along with another $300M internationally, should be what fans of the series are looking. It’s difficult to say now, but neither figure looks that doable. In the US and Canada, Saturday was up a solid but unspectacular 28.3% when subtracting the $5.7M from the opening day, suggesting a fan rush outweighed the family appeal. And Mother’s Day saw a dropoff of 34.1%, the largest in the top twelve and a troubling sign this film is not playing strong to females. With the competition up ahead, neither of these are signs of solid legs on the horizon. Moreover, the overseas opening of $112.4M is again solid but unspectacular. And given that Pikachu debuted in most major foreign countries including China, it does not seem likely the feature film will have great legs overseas either. Right now, I would anticipate Detective Pikachu to land closer to the $150M mark domestically and $270M-$280M worldwide. Should the film start to decline heavily and fail to hit $400M worldwide, it’ll be a genuine question if the studios will green light another film set in the universe given that would entail at least another $100M on the production alone.
Still the domestic box office champ in its third weekend, Avengers: Endgame nevertheless fell a larger than expected 57.0% to a $63.3M, about $1.2M more than Infinity War’s third weekend. The MCU giant is decelerating more quickly than its predecessor, though that is understandable given how monumentally massive it was right out of the gate, and its $723.7M gross is the highest for any comic book film by roughly $23M. Internationally, Endgame added $103.4M for a worldwide total of $2.490B and will crash through the $2.5B barrier this Monday, achieving that feat in only 20 days (the previous record was Avatar’s 72 days). Though it is slowing, Endgame is still on pace to top Avatar’s worldwide gross, and will look to do so sometime between June 1 and June 8.
The Hustle was able to swing a Mother’s Day increase to a soft, but respectable, $13.0M debut, though with a B- CinemaScore and other audience metrics scoring it poorly, it seems very likely to miss $30M total. STX’s Poms had a rough start with $5.4M, down a huge 60.3% from fellow Diane Keaton led Book Club from last year, and that occurred with Poms having a major Mother’s Day boost. Clearly, the concept was simply not nearly as appealing, and a domestic finish in the $15M area seems to be in the cards.
But by far the biggest loser of this weekend, however, was Fox Searchlight’s Tolkien, which bombed with a $2.2M weekend that even includes grosses from a Tuesday Fathom Event run. Weak reviews, negative press from the Tolkien estate disownment, and a last minute change to a wide release all led to this brutally low figure. Look for the biopic to disappear from theaters swiftly with a total gross under $5M.
Among holdovers, most played roughly in accordance with expectations, though special mention must be given to Sony’s The Intruder. With a 33.8% drop, it managed not only the best weekend hold in the top twelve, but The Intruder showed a significantly better decline than any of the comparisons. Though certainly buoyed by Mother’s Day, the film still had a week-to-week decline of only 32.5% on Saturday, so it’ll be very interesting to see how the legs on The Intruder look over the rest of the month.
TOP TWELVE ACTUALS
| Weekend | Total | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Avengers: Endgame | $63,299,066 | $723,745,643 | |
| Detective Pikachu | $54,365,242 | $54,365,242 | |
| The Hustle | $13,007,709 | $13,007,709 | |
| The Intruder | $7,190,325 | $21,565,451 | |
| Long Shot | $6,271,532 | $19,883,467 | |
| Poms | $5,361,937 | $5,361,937 | |
| UglyDolls | $4,147,092 | $14,507,888 | |
| Breakthrough | $2,575,263 | $37,216,069 | |
| Tolkien | $2,200,537 | $2,200,537 | |
| The Curse of La Llorona | $1,851,396 | $51,451,753 | |
| Captain Marvel | $1,851,722 | $423,810,475 | |
| Shazam! | $1,033,186 | $137,101,984 |