Home, which cost $132 million to produce, still has a long way to go to reach profitability, but it is off to an excellent start and faces minimal competition in the family film arena over the next few weeks—in fact the next direct animated feature film competitor won’t show up until Pixar’s Inside Out debuts on June 19. Home displayed some nice demographics—the opening weekend crowd was 60% female and 57% under 15. Caucasians made up 48% of the diverse audience that also included substantial portions of African-Americans (22%), Hispanics (15%), and Asians (13%). Critics were relatively hard on the film (only a 48% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes), but audiences gave it an “A” CInemaScore, which should make for a substantial run in theaters. Overseas the film is also off to a good start with $48.2 million so far for a worldwide total of 102.2 million.
It may be a little early to call this a trend, but family-targeting films, which suffered last year from an overabundance of less-than-stellar animated features, could be on the upswing again. In 2014 there were only four “family” that earned over $150 million at the domestic box office, but in just three months in 2015 both the SpongeBob Movie and Cinderella have already hit that mark, and Home looks like it will be a third, and we still have Pixar’s Inside Out, The Peanuts Movie, Minions, and The Good Dinosaur, each of which has a solid shot to make it over the $150 million mark as well.
Get Hard fared even worse with the critics (only 31% positive reviews according to review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes), but still outperformed expectations with a $34.6 million bow. Get Hard attracted an audience that was 54% male and 61% over 25, and they gave the film a mediocre “B” CinemaScore, which while a better rating than the critics gave it, doesn’t augur all that well for Get Hard’s future. The real test will come next week with the debut of Furious 7, which targets a similar demographic.
The Divergent Series: Insurgent slipped 57.8%, which is a slightly bigger drop than the first Divergent film had, but the two films are still performing almost exactly alike, so any growth for the franchise from this film will likely take place overseas.
Fourth place went to Cinderella, which slid just 49.9% in its third frame as it earned $17.5 million and brought its domestic total to $150 million.
There was a big drop-off between #4 and #5 as the low-budget horror film It Follows added almost 1200 theaters. It Follows, which has attracted critical attention as well a small but devoted following, didn’t make a huge impression as it earned just $4 million with a mediocre $3301 per-theater average. The modest Net-centered advertising push was not enough to turn the film into an overnight sensation, but there is still the chance that it could catch on at the box office (and a much better chance that it will eventually become a cult hit.
Kingsman: The Secret Service (-35.1%), The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (-37.7), and the religiously-themed Do You Believe? (-40%) all suffered modest drops from what were already modest totals. The action films Run All Night (-56.2%) and The Gunman (-59.3) took bigger hits and cemented their status as serious “underperformers” at the box office.
Be sure to check back here next week to see if Furious 7 can give the all-important summer movie season an April jumpstart.
