UPDATE: Detective Pikachu catches $20.7M opening day, but will fall below Avengers: Endgame $56M+ vs. $63M+
UPDATE 5/11/19: With an estimated $20.7M opening, Detective Pikachu unfortunately is playing closer to a fanboy driven film on day one than a less frontloaded family film. Its breakdown was extremely similar to Shazam! ($5.9M previews, $20.4M opening day) and made $53.5M over the weekend. Pikachu is likely to see a stronger Saturday bump and a bit of aid from Mother’s Day this Sunday, so look for the weekend to reach $56M-$61M. The news is even less favorable overseas, as East Asian countries are rejecting the video game adaptation; with a $43.4M running international total, $100M overseas weekend will be touch-and-go.
Avengers: Endgame has finally come down to the level of its predecessor on a daily basis, grossing $16.1M on Friday, practically identical to the same day as Infinity War. Like last week, I would expect the internal multiplier to be better thanks to an excellent Saturday bump, so a weekend between $64M and $67M is in play. While this below many expectations going into the weekend, this will still be plenty enough to make Endgame the highest grossing superhero film domestically.
Only The Hustle among holdovers looks to match tracking this weekend, with a $3.96M Friday which should translate to a $13M-$14M weekend. STX’s Poms is now likely to hit only $5M over the weekend after grossing just $1.5M on Friday, and Tolkien is flopping even worse than expected with a projected $2.4M weekend.
The Pokémon video game adaptation scored a solid $5.7M yesterday from showings that started at 4PM, roughly on par with my projection. At this juncture, it’s very difficult to know how Pikachu will play out over the weekend, since this is a great start if it plays like a family film but is merely decent if it shows frontloading akin to a franchise picture. For comparisons, How to Train Your Dragon 3 hit $3M in previews on its way to a $55.0M opening, and other family comps this year include LEGO Movie 2 ($2.1M previews, $34.1M weekend) and Dumbo ($2.6M/$46.0M). Among films less aimed at kids, WB’s own Shazam! brought in $5.9M previews and $53.5M for the weekend, and last year’s Rampage scored $2.4M previews and a $35.8M weekend.
Estimates put Avengers: Endgame’s Thursday at $7.5M, roughly a 10.7% decline from Wednesday and 8.7% ahead of the Infinity War’s comparable day. The gab between them has fallen considerably this weekend, though strong increases today and Saturday should still allow Endgame to vie for the #2 spot on biggest third weekends at around $68.5M.
The Hustle looted $774K from Thursday previews, roughly on par with the $735K brought in by Little earlier this year. Reviews are currently the worst of the year (currently 17% on Rotten Tomatoes), though with Mother’s Day boosting Sunday grosses significantly, a weekend number between $12M and $15M should result.
The not-so-very-good start to STX’s summer continues has Poms brought it only $225K from previews starting very early at 3PM. For comparison, Book Club grosses $625K with a later start time, so this is not a promising beginning. Mother’s Day will be by far its biggest day, but cracking $10M seems very unlikely.