• Beauty and the Beast sets new 2017 high with $13.14m opening
Box office bounced 115% over the weekend as the Walt Disney refresh of the Beauty And The Beast franchise opened on 706 screens. The weekend earn of $22.65m from the top 20 movies was the biggest weekend since the week ending January 11 when the top five movies all did over $2m, which contributed to $23.86m.
#1 Beauty And The Beast $13.14m
This was the biggest opening of the year and the best since Rogue One: A Star Wars Story did $14.75m on debut in late December last year.
The new release pulled a very impressive $18,619 screen average from 706 screens. That is the widest release this year, beating the opening of Fifty Shades Darker on 612 screens. It is the biggest since Rogue One opened on 932 screens. The Beast was not quite strong enough to make the all-time top 10 openings though. To crack that list it needed to outperform 2015’s Fast And Furious 7, which opened with $14.66m.
However, when the preview screening earnings are added the film took $14.9m which was enough to land inside the top 10 openings of all time. We will leave it to others to judge which one goes into the record books.
#2 The Boss Baby $2.74m
A strong opening given the competition for the 3D-animated movie featuring the voice of Alec Baldwin as the lead character. The movie opened on 259 screens with a screen average just over $10,500.
#3 Life $1.54m
Another movie in the booming sci-fi genre opened on 305 screens with a screen average of $5,078.
#4 Power Rangers $1.35m
No lack of movies prepared to open up against Beauty And The Beast this week. Power Rangers managed to secure 233 screens with a screen average of $5,811 for another sci-fi movie, albeit one aimed at a very different demo for its tale of the live action superheroes.
#5 Kong: Skull Island $1.09m
The only movie to hold in the top five from last week. Kong shed 97 screens to 297 with a screen average of $3,700. To-date the film has earned $11.44m.
Outside the top five:
Logan ranked #2 last week and #6 this week. The movie shed 127 screens but still managed to add over $1m on the weekend to its total of $21.40m.