'Creed III' Levels the Competition in Opening Weekend
by EG
Michael B. Jordan's Creed III was a heavyweight hit in its opening weekend, selling more theater tickets than expected and easily besting the competition at the box office. In distant second and third places were, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, which continues to perform very poorly for a Marvel movie, and Cocaine Bear, which turned in a second weekend that was much less impressive than its first. Read on for details.
Via Variety.
“Creed III” delivered a powerful box office knockout with its $58.6 million domestic debut, clobbering expectations and franchise records in the process.
And there’s more good news for struggling theater owners starved for compelling content. It looks like the good fortune will continue in March with “Scream VI” (March 10), “Shazam: Fury of the Gods” (March 17), “John Wick: Chapter 4” (March 24) and “Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves” (March 31). There’s at least one major release every weekend through the rest of the month, offering the kind of stability that’s been desperately missing during the great box office reset.
“Momentum is everything, and it’s often only as good as the next weekend’s openers,” says Shawn Robbins, the chief analyst at Box Office Pro. “This March has a pre-pandemic-like consistency of widely appealing, high-profile theatrical releases that will establish a terrific foundation heading into a summer filled with more of the same.”
March is rarely one for the record books — only once in modern history has the month’s ticket sales ever surpassed $1 billion, according to Comscore — but this year’s 31-day stretch is poised to buck tradition. In any case, box office returns are likely to improve upon March 2022, which topped out with $598 million as “The Batman,” “Uncharted” and “The Lost City” graced theaters. Those ticket sales were up dramatically from 2021, when the month generated $117 million, and 2020, when the month generated $256 million as the virus started to force cinemas to close. In pre-COVID times, however, March was able to bring back as much as $968 million in 2019, $902 million in 2018 and $1.17 billion in 2017 — the latter benchmark-setting run was thanks mostly to Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast” remake and Hugh Jackman’s superhero adventure “Logan.”
A winning March at the box office would continue a strong start to the new year. Overall ticket sales are 37% ahead of the same point in 2022, according to Comscore. That’s because several films — including Universal’s killer-doll thriller “M3gan,” Sony’s Tom Hanks dramedy “A Man Called Otto,” Paramount’s octogenarian comedy “80 for Brady” and Lionsgate’s faith-based “Jesus Revolution” — have encouragingly beat projections. There’s been one discordant note in this symphony of success. Disney’s “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” isn’t living up to Marvel’s stratospheric standards, dropping sharply due to bad reviews and mediocre word-of-mouth. Still, the movie crushed opening weekend expectations and managed to earn more money in three days than most releases hope to generate in their entire theatrical runs.
Get the rest of the story at Variety.