Box Office Week: Ready Player One surprises with strong $53.2M debut for its four day release as well as a $128M debut overseas. Tyler Perry's Acrimony opens solid at #2 to $17.1M and God's Not Dead: A Light in Darkness hits franchise low opening at #12 with $2.6M

Rank	Title	Domestic Gross (Weekend)	Worldwide Gross (Cume)	Week #
1	Ready Player One*	$41,210,000	$181,215,000	1
2	Tyler Perry's Acrimony	$17,100,000	$17,100,000	1
3	Black Panther	$11,263,000	$1,273,899,634	7
4	I Can Only Imagine	$10,750,685	$55,576,022	3
5	Pacific Rim Uprising	$9,205,000	$231,900,820	2

• Ready Player One opened on Wednesday domestically and its four day total is $53.2M

Notable Box Office Stories:

• Ready Player One - I guess when you're Steven Spielberg and you've made many of the most successful films of all time you just want a big hit now and then, as the director scored his biggest opening in ten years with Ready Player One opening at #1 with $41.2M. The film actually got a one day head start on the Easter weekend so the final domestic weekend total for the film by Sunday was $53.2M. Those results are pretty surprising as many were were expecting a debut in the $30M range for the three-day weekend, but early screenings were strong and the film saw a great surge by Sunday. Overseas the results were even better as the film opened to $128M. This includes a massive $61.7M opening in China, the biggest opening ever for a Warner Bros. film in that country. The film did face some hurdles in India where a distribution error caused many theaters to lose the rights to the show the film the day of. Still strong showings in South Korea and the UK means this could hold well overseas with competition being light right now.

• Ready Player One (cont.)- So the big question remains, who went to go see Ready Player One? The novel is a giant testament to the pop culture of the 1980s, a time that has been extremely well mined in Hollywood over the last decade but has seemed to dwindle now that 90s properties like Jumanji are doing extremely well. The audience for RPO was 56% over the age of 25 and 59% male, which does align generally with the expected target audience but isn't as skewed as many might have thought. 44% under the age of 25 (aka people born in 1993 or later) is a pretty good result for this film and perhaps speaks to the value of the marketing focusing more heavily on the video game aspect of the story versus the pop culture references. Indeed the film seems to be coming at a time when games like VR Chat are already approaching a very basic version of what The Oasis (the main video game from the film) is like. The film scored a pretty good A- on Cinemascore and with not much competition next weekend I think it has a lot of room to grow. It's a very interesting marker of the times that a film by Spielberg about a video game about the culture he helped created is such a cross-generational hit.

• Tyler Perry's Acrimony - Tyler Perry still shows he has sway in the US box office as his first directorial drama in 5 years opens to a solid if not amazing #2 with $17.2M. This is Perry's first dramatic film since the much maligned morality tale Temptation: Confessions of a Marriage Counselor. Perry instead spent the last 5 year creating 3 Madea movies and 5(!) hit TV shows, so it's not exactly like Perry has been slacking on the job. In general the dramatic films of Perry have never been the major hits for the hit maker, with Temptation having the highest opening with $21.6M. In fact Acrimony is the 14th worst opening for a Perry film and the second worst opening for one of his dramatic works only beating Good Deeds ($15.5M), but the film is right in the same $15M - $25M range most of his films open at. Like many of his films Acrimony was critically savaged but it received an A- on Cinemascore so again it seems Perry is one of the few critic proof filmmakers out there. The opening is a nice slight boost for lead Taraji P. Henson who started out the year rough with Proud Mary which closed to just $20M. This opening isn't going to break the bank but with a budget of $20M it's right on track with where Perry is normally. The man has become an empire all on his own and Acrimony is just another blip on his insane trajectory.

• God's Not Dead: A Light in the Darkness - I'm saddened to say that the final film of the most fascinating film trilogy of this decade has opened to a pretty terrible #12 spot with $2.6M. None of the GND trilogy ever opened above $10M, but the first did manage to score a $9.2M opening and close over $60M domestic. The second film saw a massive drop-off, closing at $20.7M and now GND: Insurgent will be lucky to end above $10M. So what happened to this once massive, game-changing franchise? Well one needs only look at the top 5 this week to see one of the big culprits, I Can Only Imagine. The film has been a massive (for a Christian film) Easter season hit, passing $50M this weekend after brushing off Paul, Apostle of Christ last weekend and now pushing aside GND: Return of Xander Cage with ease. It's interesting how a historical film and a Christianity under attack film paled in comparison to a positive film about a famous Christian rock song, perhaps indicating that audiences are more interested in films about Christian values helping rather than combating. Indeed the franchise has often been criticized by the Christian community themselves and maybe Pure Flix particular brand of martyrdom has become faux pas. We'll have to see if Pure Flix can bring it back later this year with Unbroken: Path to Redemption, a non-official sequel to the 2014 film Unbroken. Seriously, that is 100% a real film, look it up.

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	$209,498,871	$780,298,871	$175M	19
Star Wars: The Last Jedi	$620,099,903	$1,332,362,337	$200M	16
The Greatest Showman	$172,051,190	$414,152,137	$84M	15
Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle	$402,740,739	$944,448,600	$90M	15
Annihilation	$32,142,971	$32,142,971	$40M	6

Notable Film Closings

Title	Domestic Gross	Worldwide Gross	Budget
All the Money in the World	$25,113,707	$53,913,707	$50M
Early Man	$8,267,544	$42,635,148	$50M
Winchester	$25,091,816	$38,695,437	$3.5M
The Florida Project	$5,904,366	$8,856,357	$2M

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Submitted April 02, 2018 at 09:22PM by mi-16evil https://ift.tt/2GqfsDv