Battle at the Box Office 2/19

As expected, Black Panther decimated all competition as the first major blockbuster of 2018 but just how big the movie was over the weekend is incredible.

For the four day weekend (Today being President’s Day in the States), Black Panther made an estimated $235 million while it’s normal three day total was $201.7 million.  That’s the second highest opening ever for the MCU and the fifth largest opening of all time behind The Force Awakens, The Last Jedi, Jurassic World and The Avengers and Disney now owns 8 of the top 10 highest openings of all time.  Black Panther also shattered records for February opening (the previous record holder being Deadpool with $132 million), President’s Day weekend opening and potentially more as the actual numbers roll in on Tuesday afternoon.  It’s already also the 12th highest grossing MCU movie and the 17th highest Marvel adaptation in general. Internationally, Black Panther took in $169 million as well, making it’s grand 4 day total $404 million.

$185 million less in second place was Peter Rabbit, which only dropped 7.6% despite the insane competition from Black Panther, which maybe indicates it was the counterprogramming of choice for younger movie goers or people just not interested in the MCU/superheroes.  Peter Rabbit made $23 million, which brings it up to $54 million for it’s two weeks out.

Fifty Shades Freed dropped just shy of 50% from it’s opening last weekend with another $19.4 million, putting it at just over $78 million.  That drop is about the same as Fifty Shades Darker but it’s pacing about $12 million off from where that movie was at the same time frame.

Jumanji and The 15:17 Train to Paris rounded out the top 5, with Jumanji pushing up to second place on Sony’s all time lists, topping Spider-Man 2 to trail Spider-Man domestically and trailing Skyfall worldwide.

The other two new releases, which were basically sacrificed to Wakandan god Bast, were Early Man and Samson, both of which opened to single digits.  Early Man came in seventh place with $4.2 million, the lowest opening ever for Aardman Animation while Samson, from Christian distributor Pure Flix, opened outside the top 10 in eleventh place and $2.2 million and is the lowest opening for that company in 1,000+ theaters.