Box Office Week: Pacific Rim: Uprising opens at #1 with a weak $28M domestic but a much stronger $122M worldwide. Black Panther drops to #2 with $16.6M but passes The Avengers to become highest grossing superhero film domestically with $630M. Sherlock Gnomes bombs at #4 with $10.6M.

Rank	Title	Domestic Gross (Weekend)	Worldwide Gross (Cume)	Week #
1	Pacific Rim Uprising	$28,003,000	$150,503,000	1
2	Black Panther	$16,658,000	$1,237,316,236	6
3	I Can Only Imagine	$13,837,495	$38,316,986	2
4	Sherlock Gnomes	$10,600,000	$15,200,000	1
5	Tomb Raider	$10,430,000	$211,748,108	2

Notable Box Office Stories:

• Pacific Rim: Uprising - The long delayed sequel to the 2013 Guillermo del Toro directed film opened to a disappointing $28M at #1. The sequel to the now five year old film (Jesus, time flies) was not directed by del Toro, who was off making his fish sex Oscar play, but instead is the feature film debut for Steven DeKnight, a long time TV producer and director. Everything about PR:U's existence feels like a direct to VOD cash grab yet it opened in 3,000 theaters with a $150M budget and for good reason. The first Pacific Rim was one of the earliest big budget films to tank in the US ($101M) but do so well overseas ($309M) that it didn't really matter and a sequel was set soon after the film closed. Since then several films that have had a similar "bomb in the US/play well overseas" lives like Terminator: Genisys and xXx: The Return of Xander Cage have hinged their franchise hopes on overseas markets alone. PC:U is going to be fascinating to watch as the first big budget sequel to exist solely because of interest overseas. So far the play is looking good with the film earning $122.5M so far overseas, including an excellent $65M debut in China where it opened $20M higher than Pacific Rim. So Pacific Rim is the latest film where the US release is almost perfunctory. With how much marketing blitz there was it's certainly not great the film opened in the US $9M lower than the original, but it also doesn't really matter if China and other foreign markets carry that loss and they seem poised to do so. PC:U may not be long remembered for many filmgoers but it does mark a very interesting step in the expanding influence of foreign box office.

• Black Panther - While Pacific Rim: Uprising finally broke the 5 week #1 run for Black Panther the film still had a great weekend, dropping just 37.5% to come in #2 with $16.6M. That pushes the film's total domestic gross to $630.9M, passing the lifetime domestic gross of The Avengers ($623.3M). That means the film is now the highest grossing superhero film of all time and the 5th highest grossing film ever on the domestic charts. Also BP's worldwide gross this week hit $1.237B, surpassing the worldwide gross of Iron Man 3 ($1.236B) making it the 12 highest grossing film of all time and the highest grossing solo superhero film on the worldwide charts. Black Panther has just had one of the most incredible runs of any film in the last ten years and it's become a testament to what a cultural moment can mean to a film's box office success.

• Sherlock Gnomes - I know this might sound crazy but surprisingly a sequel to a 7 year old film that didn't even open well to begin with that barely markets itself as a sequel where most of the humor is based on puns didn't really open that well. Yeah I'm surprised as y'all are that Sherlock Gnomes opened at #4 to just $10.6M. Yes this clearly has rocked our sense of self in this country. How could we explain to our children that a film that was once actually called Gnomeo & Juliet: Sherlock Gnomes could possibly open $15M less than the original which didn't even crack $100M domestic? Oh why would a country turn its back on a film that had actual posters like this, and this, and this, and of course this? Who could possibly explain why it only opened to $2.1M in 19 foreign markets this weekend when such droll fare like Black Panther and Pacific Rim: Uprising are out right now? Perhaps gnome one will every gnome why this film fell so low...gnome.

• Paul, Apostle of Christ - This Easter is seeing three films make major plays for the Christian market and the second of the three could not quite compete as it opened to #8 with $5M. The film about the biblical figures St. Paul and St. Luke is an independent production that is surprisingly being distributed by Sony, another example of how major studios are once again dipping their toes into the Christian film world, something most of the majors have avoided since the days of Old Hollywood. However the film just couldn't compete with the surprising mini-juggernaut that is I Can Only Imagine, which dropped just 19.1% this weekend and earned $13M. The opening isn't terrible for the film which only cost $5M, but it's another example that Christian audience might be tired of the historical stories and more interested in modern takes on faith. Films like Samson and Genesis: Paradise Lost have been unable to match the success of films about modern faith like Miracles from Heaven and God's Not Dead. Still it's interesting to see big studios begin to embrace films on the scale and budget that indie studios like PureFlix (who will round out the Easter race with God's Not Dead 3 next weekend) have been trafficking in for years.

• Midnight Sun - When did we decide that it was really really romantic to have a debilitating disease? I guess it must have been The Fault in Our Stars because I think Midnight Sun, which opened terribly at #10 with $4.1M, might take the cake for the most ridiculous version. The film stars Bela Throne as a girl suffering from xeroderma pigmentosum, a real condition where you can't go into the sunlight or else you will receive severe burns on your skin. Of course the film is about a very pretty girl in love with a very pretty man but oh no she can't go outside because it's like she a real life sexy vampire. Funny thing about xeroderma pigmentosum, it's a pretty horrible disease and if you want a good laugh just compare pictures of Bela Thorne in this film to real pictures of xeroderma pigmentosum suffers (warning: it's a fairly NSFL google). Sorry this isn't super box office related, this is a film that barely exists and is made to squeak a very tiny amount of money out of a very specific niche genre so there's not much to say for it's box office importance which is none. It's just to me the epitome of this very cynical romanticized disease trend that is getting slightly out of hand.

• Unsane - The latest film experiment from Steven Soderbergh has, like most of Soderbergh's film experiments, opened pretty terribly at #11 with $3.8M. Unsane is notable as the entire film was shot on an iPhone 7 with Soderbergh acting as the DP and director. While Tangerine was the first film shot on an iPhone to get major attention, Unsane is the first to open wide and stars fairly well known people like Claire Foy, Jay Pharaoh, and Juno Temple. However while critics for the most part praised Soderbergh's attempts the lack of marketing for the $1.5M budget film and the look meant people mostly decided to either skip or wait for this one on home video. The film also received a rough B- score on Cinemascore so don't expect this to become the next Blair Witch either. Soderbergh will continue to experiment but frankly like most of his experiments this will be more notable to film critics and filmmakers than the general audience.

Films Reddit Wants to Follow

This is a segment where we keep a weekly tally of currently showing films that aren't in the Top 5 that fellow redditors want updates on. If you'd like me to add a film to this chart, make a comment in this thread.

Title	Domestic Gross (Cume)	Worldwide Gross (Cume)	Budget	Week #
Coco	$209,358,528	$757,815,513	$175M	18
Star Wars: The Last Jedi	$619,972,809	$1,332,235,824	$200M	15
The Greatest Showman	$170,928,688	$407,391,320	$84M	14
Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle	$401,668,450	$942,974,551	$90M	14
Annihilation	$31,418,405	$31,418,405	$40M	5

Notable Film Closings

Title	Domestic Gross	Worldwide Gross	Budget
Wonder	$132,422,809	$298,714,696	$20M
Phantom Thread	$20,956,300	$44,356,300	$35M
Darkest Hour	$56,361,300	$144,661,300	$30M
Den of Thieves	$44,947,622	$74,847,622	$30M

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Submitted March 26, 2018 at 11:40PM by mi-16evil https://ift.tt/2DWdLrC