5/3/19 Weekend Actuals — Avengers: Endgame continues to rule with near record $147.4M second weekend, becomes the second highest grossing film of all time. Everything else is puny
5/6/19 UPDATE: With the last dollar counted, Avengers: Endgame fell just $1.8M short of the second weekend record, $147.4M vs. $149.2M. As with Friday, the Sunday decline compared unfavorably to Infinity War, dropping 26.7% compared to its predecessor 21.5% second Sunday regression; while Game of Thrones probably contributes somewhat, it’s likely that now the rush factor has tapered off, the three hour running time is impacting late night sales. Still, with $621.3M already, Endgame has almost certainly passed the first Avengers flick with just Monday morning box office, and next weekend will crash through the $700M mark domestically and $2.5B worldwide.
The rest of the top ten didn’t see much movement as estimates were largely accurate, with the most notable change being Long Shot’s missing the $10M mark by $260K. Thankfully starting next week, we will get two months straight of exciting openers as Hollywood throws a pummeling number of major releases to the masses.
Top Twelve Actuals
| Weekend | Total | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Avengers: Endgame | $147,383,211 | $621,277,849 | |
| The Intruder | $10,855,054 | $10,855,054 | |
| Long Shot | $9,740,064 | $9,740,064 | |
| Ugly Dolls | $8,603,407 | $8,603,407 | |
| Captain Marvel | $4,282,244 | $420,774,262 | |
| Breakthrough | $3,906,900 | $33,183,412 | |
| The Curse of La Llorona | $3,702,607 | $48,302,610 | |
| Shazam! | $2,504,958 | $135,248,748 | |
| Dumbo | $1,511,608 | $109,788,200 | |
| Little | $1,420,165 | $38,530,490 | |
| El Chicano | $700,261 | $700,261 | |
| Pet Sematary | $502,803 | $53,760,022 |
Reaching several key milestones and coming extremely close to others, Avengers: Endgame has snapped a nine and a half year lockdown on the top two slots by James Cameron, grossing $2.189B worldwide to just barely eclipse Titanic (which stands at $2.188B including the 2012 re-release).
Domestically, it came in as the second largest second weekend of all time, with $145.8M against The Force Awakens’ $149.2M, which is slightly under expectations going into the weekend which ranged from $150M to (a frankly unreasonable) $180M from some outlets. But it’s not over yet, as Disney is being cautious as they have a projected Sunday drop of 28.8%. When dealing with these sort of numbers—a record second Saturday of $61.4M—the potential for a sizable dollar increase with actuals is there, and Endgame only needs a reasonable 23.1% drop today to be match $149.2M for the weekend. Overall, the summer starter stands at $619.7M, just $3.7M short 2012’s The Avengers final gross, and again that can change when actuals are reported on Monday. Looking ahead, more worthy competition will begin to open this Friday, and there is no freebie weekend after Memorial Day as their was for Infinity War. So a final gross topping $936M is pretty much off the table, though finishing over $850M should absolutely still not. And that’s not too shabby at all!
As mentioned, Endgame is #2 on the worldwide charts now, after adding $282.2M to its international war chest, for an overseas total of $1.569B (also #2 of all time). Any increase with actuals is unlikely to be enough to gross the $2.2B threshold, and a larger than expected drop in China prevented it from crossing the mark; the total is China is still $576.8M, easily the top figure for a non-foreign release. The pace that Endgame continues to shatter global milestones remains remarkable, as it topped the $2B speed record by 36 days, and should cross $2.5B next Sunday, its 19th day of release (Avatar managed that number in 76 days). China will become a non-factor starting next weekend, however, the rest of the world contributed roughly $220M to this weekend’s total, so there’s a lot of gas left in the tank. Not becoming the top grossing film of all time at this point would be shocking, and could happen as early as May 20; if not then, then almost certainly over Memorial Day weekend so long as the drops from here on out are not too severe.
The openers that had the misfortune to attempt counterprogramming against the superhero colossus were met with half of the gross they probably could have achieved elsewhere. The Intruder debuted at #2 with $11.0M, roughly on par with expectations, and could get to $30M in the end. With a budget of only $8M, this will certainly be in the black for distributor Sony Screen Gems. Long Shot’s opening weekend of $10.0M is far more problematic given the $40M price tag on the production. While it many have legs to match the adjective in its title, it will simply not be able to recoup that budget at the box office.
But Long Shot is not among the two biggest losers of this weekend: STX’s UglyDolls grossed only $8.5M, slightly above my forecast but lower than any official tracking going into the weekend. Given the budget (reported at $45M, though Deadline has it at $52M), a likely brutal decline next week in the face of Detective Pikachu, and STX’s original plans to turn this into a TV series for Hulu, this is certainly the first bomb of the summer. Releasing lower budget animation films (i.e., under the $70M-80M Illumination spends) in the marketplace is tough now, with Netflix providing a number of family films that do not look far off from Uglydolls’ quality. Finally, Briarcliff’s El Chicano was exactly on target with my forecast, grossing $700K this weekend. Certainly a lower budget than two (and possibly three) of the other openers, this was still dumped in only 605 theaters and stood no chance. Joe Carnaham is probably glad he deleted his twitter after accosting film critics over mediocre reviews, as he’d go supernova looking at this box office.
The rest of the top twelve was a dumpster fire, as the average decline was 54.6%. I had thought holdovers would be able to recover somewhat from last week, but instead the theater and screen loss from new films erased any possibility of that. The most notable milestone is Captain Marvel crossing $420M this weekend, and by two weeks’ time should have leaped over the $425M mark, a remarkable result for the solo superhero flick. Even with the blood loss, the top twelve still grossed a great $193.6M, up 19.5% from last year and better than most first weekends of May. Thanks to Endgame’s remarkable run, the deficit from last year is now “only” $392.4M, and the strong summer ahead will look to completely close that gap by Labor Day.