'Onward' Has Quiet Opening on a Slow Weekend
by EG
Maybe moviegoers were staying home because of coronavirus, or maybe they just weren't that interested in Onward. Whatever the case, Pixar's latest came in a bit behind expectations and brought in less than the studio's movies usually do. Read on for details.
Family animated offering Onward opened to a muted $40 million from 4,310 theaters in North America, one of the lowest nationwide starts for the storied Pixar brand.
It's unclear how much of an effect worries over the coronavirus had on moviegoing in the U.S. over the weekend, or whether Onward faced its own challenges. Comparisons to last year — when Captain Marvel opened to $153 million — were always going to be brutal. Overall, revenue for the weekend was down more than 50 percent from the same frame in 2019.
The impact of COVID-19 is clearly being felt overseas, where cinemas are closed in China and box office revenue is compromised in markets including South Korea, Italy and Japan. Onward came in well behind projections with an underwhelming $28 million from its first 47 territories for a global bow of $68 million. The movie did not open in any of the countries most impacted by the coronoavirus.
While Onward received strong reviews and an 86 percent "fresh" score on Rotten Tomatoes, it had only been tracking for a domestic launch in the $40 million-$45 million range even before the virus became a global concern.
The film, which earned an A- CinemaScore, follows two teenage elf brothers (voiced by Chris Pratt and Tom Holland) who embark on a quest to discover if there is still magic out there and if they can use it to bring back their late father. Dan Scanlon, who directed Monsters University, is behind the film and wrote the movie with Jason Headley and Keith Bunin.
Pixar's lowest nationwide openings include 1995's Toy Story, its first release, ($29.1 million); 2015's The Good Dinosaur ($39.2 million); and 1998's A Bug's Life, which first bowed in one or two theaters before breaking wide over Thanksgiving with a three-day gross of $33.3 million and roughly $40 million for the long holiday frame.
Get the rest of the story at The Hollywood Reporter.
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