Lowest Easter Weekend At The B.O. Since 2003 Despite $26M+ Purse Of 'La Llorona'
As we were the first to say yesterday very early in the morning, it's the lowest Easter weekend at the box office in well over a decade – actually, since 2003, per ComScore this morning (when it hit $107.1M), with the last three days totaling $110.8M in US/Canada ticket sales. This despite the fact that New Line's $9M James Wan horror production, The Curse of La Llorona, over-performed and kicked its $15M-$17M tracking to the tune of $26.5M.
This weekend's domestic B.O. is also off 12% from the comparative three-day frame a year ago ($125.55M), which was also the pre-period prior to Avengers: Infinity War debuting.
All of this speaks to the power of Avengers: Endgame, or specifically, a hands-down, must-see Marvel movie on the calendar: no major studio wants to program a tentpole and spend a $100M-plus global P&A to launch a movie in the weekend preceding a Marvel movie, even if it's during a lucrative holiday period at the box office. At least that's the attitude this year.
True, folks may curb their movie ticket spending at the B.O. in the weekend prior to a Marvel or Star Wars movie, but c'mon — it's Easter weekend, and three-quarters of the nation's K-12 schools were on break. Previous Easter weekends, when Furious 7 and Batman v. Superman played, have amassed north of $224M. Not to mention, studios have proven before that two tentpoles, launched next to each other in subsequent weekends, can live in the marketplace at the same time.
Nonetheless, the 2019 domestic box office according to ComScore still lags greatly behind last year at -16% with $2.9 billion through today, a difference of $568M. Endgame isn't going to fix that gaping hole in just one weekend of its opening; it could take well into June before we make up that difference. Much of this has to do with how pics were dated between last year and this year. Then again, there were some movies like Universal/BVI's Glass and Fox's Alita which didn't work as they were intended to do. Marvel launched Black Panther in mid February last year and amassed $688M by the time when Avengers: Infinity War opened. Compare this to Captain Marvel which just became the 7th Marvel move to cross $400M in its 45th day of release today. The pic saw a 6% spike in business despite shedding 322 screens as fans prep for Endgame next weekend. Captain America: Civil War took 44 days to hit $400M, Iron Man 3 reached that threshold in 47 days.
Warner Bros. hit the demos they were expecting for La Llorona with 49% Hispanic audiences and 30% females under 25, along with 26% men under 25. She played best in the West and South-West, with 17 of the pic's top 20 runs coming from these regions. The pic is safe counter-programming at a minimal estimated domestic P&A spend around $35M-$40M, which can be the second choice next weekend when Avengers: Endgame potentially sets another opening weekend record, beating Infinity War's $257.6M.
Disney/Fox's faith-based Breakthrough drew $11.1M over the 3-day and $14.6M since its Wednesday opening at 2,824. While that's slightly lower than the $14.8M 3-day and $18.3M made by DeVon Franklin's Miracles From Heaven, it's not a disaster off the pic's estimated $14M production cost. These faith-based titles have a home entertainment life for their demos. As typical with faith-based films, they earn great exits based on their demos, and PostTrak shows 49% females over 25 being the dominant quad, and 51% over 35, with an overall 4 1/2 stars and a very notable 69% definite recommend. Overall audience diversity breakdown was 48% Caucasian, 28% Hispanic, 15% African American, & 9% Asian/Other. Breakthrough played strong in the Mid-West and South, with the top 10 theaters in that area. Missouri and Tennessee had seven of the top ten runs. Meanwhile, anti-abortion film Unplanned from PureFlix in its fourth weekend made $650K off 839 theaters for a running $17.2M cume.
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