Weekend Box Office: ‘Pacific Rim Uprising’ Beats ‘Black Panther’ With Tepid $28M

A glut of new movies underperform as they unfurl nationwide — including Steven Soderbergh’s latest film — while Wes Anderson’s ‘Isle of Dogs’ soars at the specialty box office.

Legendary and Universal’s Pacific Rim Uprising dethroned Black Panther at the domestic box office with $28 million from 2,850 theaters.

While coming in ahead of tracking, that’s still a troublesome start for a movie that cost at least $150 million to produce before marketing. Overall revenue for the weekend was down more than 35 percent as Pacific Rim and four other new nationwide releases failed to wow, including a new movie from Steven Soderbergh.

Pacific Rim 2 is a far bigger player overseas, where the $150 million film debuted to $122.5 million, including a rousing $65 million in China, where Legendary East has sole distribution duties. That puts the movie’s global bow at $150.5 million.

The first Pacific Rim, directed by Guillermo del Toro, was likewise muted in its North American launch, opening to $37.3 million in summer 2013. It went on to earn a sizable $309.2 million overseas all-in (China’s contribution was $111.9 million). Domestically, it topped out at $101.8 million.

John Boyega and Scott Eastwood lead the cast of Pacifc Rim 2, with Steven S. DeKnight helming in his feature directorial debut. Legendary and Universal okayed the sequel prior to Legendary getting new leadership and a fresh infusion of funding. Legendary put up the majority of the production budget.

In its sixth weekend, Disney and Marvel’s Black Panther banked another $16.7 million for a domestic total of $630.9 million, becoming the top-grossing superhero film of all time in North America, unadjusted for inflation.

That’s not the only milestone the weekend brought. Globally, Black Panther finished Sunday with $1.237 billion in ticket sales, passing up Iron Man 3 ($1.214 billion) to rank as the No. 3 superhero title of all time at the worldwide box office behind Avengers ($1.518 billion) and Avengers: Age of Ultron ($1.405 billion).

Black Panther came in No. 2 in North America, followed by faith-based holdover I Can Only Imagine, which fell just 18 percent to an estimated $14 million for a 10-day domestic total of $38.5 million. The film is so popular that Roadside Attractions and Lionsgate added 653 runs, bringing the movie’s total theater count to 2,253.

Among the flurry of new offerings on the marquee, MGM and Paramount’s new animated family film Sherlock Gnomes opened to a disappointing $10 million-$11 million from 3,662 theaters. Paramount and MGM are hopeful that the family film, coming in No. 4, will benefit from the upcoming Easter holiday and spring break.

A sequel to Gnomeo and Juliet (2011), Sherlock Gnomes certainly doesn’t lack for star power. The voice cast includes returning castmembers James McAvoy, Emily Blunt, Michael Caine, Maggie Smith, Stephen Merchant and Ozzy Osbourne, plus Johnny Depp, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Mary J. Blige as Irene.

MGM and Warner Bros. Tomb Raider rounded out the top five in its second weekend with $10.4 million for a troubled 10-day North American total of $41.7 million. The film, which fell 56 percent domestically, continued to make up ground internationally, earning another $34.1 million offshore for a foreign total of $170 million and global haul of $211.7 million.

Facing formidable competition from I Can Only Imagine, Sony/Affirm’s faith-based film Paul, Apostle of Christ only managed an eighth-place finish in its debut, earning $5 million from 1,473 theaters.

Midnight Sun, a teen romantic drama, opened in tenth place for Global Road with an estimated $4.1 million from 2,173 locations. The film, starring Bella Thorne, Patrick Schwarzenegger and Rob Riggle, was financed by the Boies/Schiller Film Group.

Midnight Sun managed to come in ahead of Steven Soderbergh’s Unsane, a new psychological horror-thriller starring The Crown‘s Claire Foy and shot with an iPhone 7. Bleecker Street and Soderbergh’s Fingerprint Releasing are handling the movie, which reportedly cost a mere $1.5 million to make.

Unsane, marking the worst wide launch of Soderbergh’s directing career, grossed $3.9 million from 2,023 theaters. Juno Temple, Joshua Leonard, Jay Pharoah, Aimee Mullins and Amy Irving co-star.

Soderbergh’s film had its world premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival in February, as did Wes Anderson’s Isle of Dogs, which pranced into 27 theaters over the weekend.

Isle of Dogs was one of the weekend’s few success stories as it grossed an estimated $1.6 million for a screen average north of $59,000 — the best in recent memory for a movie opening in more than 25 cinemas.

Bryan Cranston, Edward Norton, Bill Murray, Jeff Goldblum and Greta Gerwig are among the voice cast of Anderson’s stop-motion animated adventure about a boy and his faithful pet out to stop a canine genocide.

Source: hollywoodreporter.com