Angry Birds posted the third best opening ever for a Sony animated release, trailing only the two Hotel Transylvania films, and the irascible avian epic has a good shot to become the highest-grossing video game movie of all time. Right now Angry Birds is well behind the $47 million opening of Paramount’s 2001 Tomb Raider, but given the traditionally stronger “legs” of animated features, it is likely that Angry Birds will eclipse Tomb Raider’s domestic total of $131 million (though not if the totals are adjusted for inflation). In addition to the popularity of Rovio’s mobile phone game, Angry Birds benefited from a major marketing campaign that involved more than 100 tie-in companies including McDonalds.
Since the studio did not release demographic data or the first weekend CinemaScore for Angry Birds, it is difficult to predict what will happen in coming weeks. In spite of increased competition for its target family audience that starts next weekend with the release of Tim Burton’s Alice Through the Looking Glass, Angry Birds should be in a strong position with the upcoming Memorial Day weekend and the end of the school year providing plenty of opportunities for a long run, if audiences continue to respond favorably to the film’s threadbare and thoroughly predictable formula of pop culture wisecracks for adults, and fart jokes for kids, which could only earn Angry Birds a 42% positive rating on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes.
Captain America: Civil War performed about as expected, dropping 54% in its third weekend as it earned $33.1 million to bring its domestic total to $347.4 million. In the next few weeks Civil War should slip past Deadpool ($362.7 million) to become the highest-grossing film of the year in the domestic market. Overseas Civil War has earned $706.1 million to bring the film’s global total to $1.1 billion, making it the tenth Disney film to earn over $1 billion and moving Civil War to #19 on the all-time list of global box office champions (not adjusted for inflation). Among comic book inspired films Civil War now ranks #5 (not adjusted for inflation) and it should pass The Dark Knight Rises ($1.084 billion) and quite possibly Iron Man 3 ($1.215 billion).
Things will get very interesting for Civil War next weekend when the Marvel behemoth will take on X-Men: Apocalypse, another Marvel superhero film, but one produced by Fox, not Marvel Studios. So far in 2016 we have seen Deadpool, the first Marvel-based “R” rated film, make an extraordinary impact on the market, followed by Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice, which got off to an excellent start and then fizzled, and now Captain America: Civil War, which has performed (so far) much like a post-Avengers Marvel Studios' hit (think Avengers: Age of Ultron). If there is any pattern of “Superhero fatigue” among audiences, it is hard to discern at this point, but let’s see what happens next weekend.
Third place went to the R-rated comedy Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising, which earned an estimated $21.8 million, a whopping 56% dropped from the 2014 Neighbors, which opened with $49 million. Comedies generally have better “legs” than big action-packed studio tentpoles, and Neighbors 2 was surprisingly well-reviewed for a sequel (62% positive on Rotten Tomatoes), so the immense opening weekend drop from the original film, which closely mirrors “the total bomb” performance of the R-rated Hot Tub Time Machine 2 (down 57% from its predecessor), might not be as predictive as it seems.
Audiences for the opening weekend of Neighbors 2 skewed slightly male (51%) and younger (61% under 25) with Caucasians accounting for 41%, followed by Hispanics (34%), Asians (11%), and African-Americans (11%). With a cost of just $38 million, Neighbors 2, which has earned $51.8 million overseas already, won’t be a flop, but it will likely have to wait for the post theatrical window to get the kind of exposure that its considerable laughs deserve.
Shane (Iron Man 3) Black’s buddy/private eye action/comedy The Nice Guys, which scored the best reviews of any widely-released film this weekend, opened weakly with just $11.3 million. This 1980s throwback cost $50 million to produce, and it appears it will have a very tough struggle to break even. Debuting the film on the same weekend as another R-rated comedy (Neighbors 2) may well have been a major mistake, as both films underperformed. Audiences still might find their way to The Nice Guys in theaters, but the film deserves a better fate than it has received so far.
John Favreau’s live-action adaptation of The Jungle Book was a close #5 (it may actually be #4 when official numbers come out tomorrow). The Kipling-based epic dropped just 35.6% in its sixth weekend in theaters as it earned $11 million and brought its domestic total to $327.4 million and gave Disney two films in the top 5 yet again. By this time next week The Jungle Book will have topped Batman v. Superman to become the #4 film of 2016 so far, trailing just Deadpool, Civil War, and Zootopia.
Jodie Foster’s The Money Monster dropped just 52.1% as it earned $7.1 million and brought its domestic total to $27.1 million, demonstrating that there is at least some room at the spring box office for adult-skewing dramas. Also holding better than expected was the horror movie The Darkness, which dropped 52.3% in its second frame (a good hold for a poorly reviewed horror film), as the micro-budgeted horror film earned $2.4 million and brought its total to $8.5 million.
Disney’s animated feature Zootopia, which has spent 12 weekends in the top 10, earned $1.7 million to bring its domestic total to $334.4 million. This “original” property has now earned $982 million worldwide, and has surpassed Despicable Me 2 ($970 million) to become the fourth highest-grossing animated feature of all time (not adjusted for inflation).
Be sure to check back here next weekend to see if X-Men: Apocalypse can continue the strong showings of 2016’s superhero films, or if Tim Burton’s Alice Through the Looking Glass can capture the box office magic of its live-action predecessor Alice in Wonderland, which earned $334 million domestically (and $1 billion globally) in 2010.