‘Captain America’ #1 Again as the Marvel Cinematic Universe Tops $10 Billion Worldwide
Disney secured the top two spots at the box office for a second straight weekend as Captain America: Civil War and The Jungle Book had repeat performances at #1 and #2 respectively. The weekend’s new wide releases, Money Monster and The Darkness, both performed above expectations and, in limited release, A24’s The Lobster scored the best specialty opening of the year.
Repeating at number one, Disney and Marvel’s Captain America: Civil War brought in an estimated $72.5 million, enough to make it one of the top ten second weekend results of all-time. The 59% drop is on par with last year’s Avengers: Age of Ultron and if it continues on this trajectory it will be looking at a domestic cume at or around $430 million. As of now, the domestic total is just shy of $300 million.
Internationally the film continues the push toward becoming the year’s first $1 billion earner worldwide as it brought in $84.2 million, bringing the international cume to $645 million and the global total to $940.89 million. The film’s performance also pushes the cumulative, worldwide total for the thirteen films that currently make up the Marvel Cinematic Universe to over $10 billion with Civil War ranking fourth on the worldwide list (seventh domestically) among all films in the MCU.
Finishing second, Disney’s The Jungle Book brought in an estimated $17.7 million, pushing the film’s cume over $310 million. This is the second Disney release in 2016 to top $300 million domestically after Zootopia and they’ll soon be joined by Civil War.
The Jungle Book also continues to find success internationally as it brought in another $15.2 million overseas bringing its international cume to $516.3 million and its global total to $828 million. Disney now holds three of the top five spots on both the worldwide and domestic charts for 2016. Of those three, The Jungle Book is the only one that has not yet opened in all international markets as it still has yet to be released in Korea and Japan.
The first newcomer on the chart is TriStar’s Money Monster, which opened in third with an estimated $15 million. Expectations heading into the weekend were muted, especially for a film headlined by George Clooney and Julia Roberts, and, while the film technically over-performed, star power such as this used to be a much bigger draw.
As for the film’s trajectory, looking at the filmography for the two actors, should Money Monster perform similar to Clooney’s Monuments Men it would end up with a domestic run around $50 million. However, a run in a range closer to Roberts’ Larry Crowne or Duplicity, seems more likely. Both opened around $13 million with Duplicity having slightly longer legs and, by comparison to Money Monster, offer a range of $35-45 million for the film’s domestic run.
Finishing in fourth was BH Tilt’s The Darkness, which brought in an estimated $5.18 million, just a hair over the studio’s expectation. The micro-budgeted feature opened in 1,755 theaters and took advantage of targeted digital marketing to bring in the core demographic. The move appears to have worked, though how it holds on next weekend will tell us a bit more about these targeted releases.
The Darkness scored a “C” CinemaScore from opening day audiences and holds a 0% rating at RottenTomatoes. Last year BH Tilt scored a good opening for Eli Roth’s The Green Inferno, but it wasn’t able to hold on to much of its audience as it quickly plummeted 62.7% in its second weekend. Will The Darkness suffer a similar fate?
Rounding out the weekend top five is Mother’s Day, which skyrocketed last weekend thanks to its holiday timing, but fell off a cliff this weekend. Nosediving over 70%, the film brought in an estimated $3.25 million this weekend.
The weekend’s top “per theater” performer was A24’s release of The Lobster, which brought in an estimated $188,095 from four theaters for a solid, $47,024 per theater average, the best we’ve seen this year when it comes to specialty releases. The film will expand further next weekend before going wide on May 27.
Performing well just behind The Lobster was Roadside’s release of the Amazon Studios feature Love & Friendship, which brought in an estimated $132,750 from four theaters for a $33,188 per theater average.
Next weekend sees the release of Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising, which has already brought in $19.7 million after two weeks in international release, along with The Angry Birds Movie and The Nice Guys. Meanwhile, overseas markets will begin watching X-Men: Apocalypse as the film is hitting international markets (except for China and Japan) one week before it arrives in theaters domestically.