For the first in the franchises eight year history, a Kung Fu Panda film debuted outside of the summertime season, instead opting for a late January approach giving it the chance to flourish at the Chinese box office during Chinese New Year. Meanwhile, here in North America, this debut allowed it the chance to open in a far less competitive environment than the summer months. Over this unique weekend, Kung Fu Panda 3 scrounged up $41 million, an OK opening that’s well below its predecessors, with the first one gobbling up $60.2 million in its opening weekend while the second one, after opening on a Thursday, took in $47.6 million.
The coming weeks should be kind for the newest Panda adventure; though the Super Bowl next weekend will damage its second weekend prospects a bit, being the only family movie in the marketplace for the lucrative Presidents Day weekend should give it a might domestic box office boost. Of course, it’s already scored the biggest opening weekend ever in China for an animated film, so even though it came in under expectations in North America, its international grosses will almost certainly make up for any shortcomings here.
As we go forward, keep in mind that inclement weather diluted the grosses of a number of movies last weekend, meaning most holdover titles in the top ten had abnormally small declines. Now then, in second place was The Revenant, losing 22.5% for a fourth wide release weekend haul of $12.4 million and a current domestic total of $138.1 million. Right behind Leo was Star Wars: The Force Awakens, dipping just 23.4% from last weekend (its best weekend to weekend decline yet) for a $10.7 million sum and bringing its domestic take up to a strong $895.4 million.
In fourth place was another one of this weekends four new wide releases, The Finest Hours, which grossed only $10.3 million in its debut session. Considering this one cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $70-80 million to produce, that’s a pretty poor start. In the pantheon of Chris Pine wide release weekends, it’s his third lowest opening weekend, only ahead of Lindsay Lohan vehicle Just My Luck (which I had no idea existed prior to taking a gander at his Box Office Mojo page), which opened to $5.6 million, and People Like Us, which debuted to $4.2 million.
Last weekends new releases seemed to benefit the most from this weekends unusually tiny weekend to weekend decline, especially The Boy, which lost only 27% from its opening weekend for a second weekend haul of $7.89 million. considering most horror films typically lose over 60% in their second weekends, a decline this small is kind of insane. If it doesn’t plummet over Super Bowl weekend, it could get a further boost from being the only horror offering around over Presidents Day weekend. For now, The Boy has taken in $21.5 million over ten days/
In seventh place was Dirty Grandpa, losing 32% for a second weekend gross of $7.5 million, bringing its ten day gross to $22.8 million. Right behind it was fellow second weekend holdover The 5th Wave, which dropped only 32% for a second weekend gross of $7 million, taking its ten day haul to $20.1 million. The 5th Wave has already surpassed the total domestic cume of Beautiful Creatures, and should also outgross The Host and The Mortal Instruments: City Of Bones in its domestic run.
Fifty Shades Of Black fell way short of its predecessor in its opening weekend, grossing only $6.1 million, about a third of the opening weekend of A Haunted House ($18.1 million), and even fell short of the opening weekends of Dance Flick ($10.6 million) and A Haunted House 2 ($8.8 million). Similarly faring poorly on its opening weekend was Jane Got A Gun, which got zero promotion (I noticed a lot of high profile film journalists on Twitter being bewildered over the weekend to discover this thing was even opening this weekend!), grossing only $803,000 from 1,210 locations.
The Top 12 this weekend grossed only $123.5 million, up 46% from the same weekend last year when American Sniper was the number one movie in America for the last time.
