Box-Office: “Hunger” Soft, “Marvels” Plunges

As expected, “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes” took the top spot at the box-office this weekend with the prequel film’s opening weekend haul earning $19.1 million on its opening day (including $5.75 million in Thursday previews).

The result is the movie is looking at a three-day opening weekend debut of around $45 million – an okay start but behind the $50 million projections suggested over the past week.

It’s far behind the debuts of films in the series a decade ago which scored two to three times as much in their domestic debuts, and had the worst reviews of the franchise to date.

With a $100 million production budget (much of which is covered by foreign sales and tax credits) and an overseas debut expected to be on par with the domestic, it will likely be fine but the audience B+ CinemaScore suggests it’s not going as well as the studio probably hoped.

“The Marvels” fell off a cliff in its second weekend. The superhero team-up title earned just $2.8 million on Friday, down 87% from its opening day, and is looking like it will struggle to hit $10 million in its second weekend.

“Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” had the biggest second weekend drop of any Marvel film with 69.9%, this is likely set to break that record.

“Trolls Band Together” is on track to take second place with a projected $30 million for the weekend after taking $9.3 million on its opening day. The film received an excellent A CinemaScore so should keep bringing families back.

Eli Roth-directed horror slasher “Thanksgiving” took $3.8 million on opening day and is tracking for a decent $10 million opening weekend – not bad considering the tight $15 million production budget.

“Five Nights at Freddy’s” will close out the Top 5 with a further $3.1 million through the weekend. Taika Waititi’s “Next Goal Wins” soccer comedy took just $1.1 million on opening day.

Source: Variety