Box Office Week: Logan debuts to an incredible $85.3M, the 5th highest debut ever for an R-rated film. Get Out has an incredible 20% drop for a great weekend at #2 with $26.1M. Christian film The Shack exceeds predictions at #3 with $16.1M and teen fantasy drama Before I Fall bombs at #5 with $4.9M.

Rank	Title	Domestic Gross (Weekend)	Worldwide Gross (Cume)	Week #
1	Logan	$85,300,000	$237,800,000	1
2	Get Out	$19,000,000	$75,954,335	2
3	The Shack	$16,100,000	$16,100,000	1
4	The LEGO Batman Movie	$11,650,000	$256,831,801	4
5	Before I Fall	$4,948,538	$4,948,538	1

Notable Box Office Stories:

• I think it's now fair to say the success of Deadpool as a R-rated comic book movie was no fluke as Logan defied even high expectations and opened at #1 with $85.3M. Predictions were high, but still mostly peaked around the $60M - $70M range, so the fact it surpassed 50 Shades of Grey as the 5th highest grossing R-rated domestic release is a major achievement. Even more impressive is comparing Logan to previous X-Men films. For starters this is the best premiere of the three solo Wolverine films, which is very impressive considering that it just barely squeaked past the $85M premiere of X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Okay yes that film was trashed critically but you have to remember that film was the premiere solo X-Men film coming off three megahit films and introduced (rather horribly) popular X-Men characters Gambit and Wolverine, so a movie starring only two major X-Men characters, rated R, with a dark violent tone surpassing that is quite a feat. The film is also the fifth best opening overall for an X-Men film and is just a few thousand behind X-2's opening and could easily surpass it when actuals come in. Logan wasn't just a hit domestically, as it opened to $152M overseas. That's the best international opening ever for an R-rated Fox film and the third best international opening ever for the company overall. This included an impressive $48M premiere in China despite the fact the cut that was shown there was heavily censored. With incredible reviews and an early push to get the film to be a consideration for next year's awards runs, the film has clearly shown that R-rate comic book films have an interesting place in the market. With such a success built on a film about finality (it's not a spoiler that this is Hugh Jackman's supposed final outing as the character) one wonders what lessons Hollywood and Fox can take from this film. At very least it shows audiences are willing to let the characters explore deeper themes, more adult storylines, lower stakes, and both this and Deadpool showed you can make a crazy amount of money without 3D. The legs remain to be seen (it did score an A- on Cinemascore so will likely hold well but there is stiff competition ahead) but Logan has already surpassed the odds and given a possible new direction for superhero films to consider.

• My two golden rules for box office prediction are never underestimate horror or Christian films, the latter of which was proven by the The Shack the adaptation of a popular faith based novel that surprised predictions by opening at #3 to a very good $16.1M. Like most Christian films The Shack was savaged by critics giving it a 15% on Rotten Tomatoes, but audiences don't seem to care as the film scored an A on Cinemascore. This is one of the bigger new Christian film productions, being made by Lionsgate instead of an independent studio like Pure Flix and the wider marketing has likely helped surpass the expectations that placed the film around $8M opening. The film should hold well as counter-programming and will easily pass its $20M budget.

• While the counter-programming worked for The Shack, it clearly did not work for Before I Fall, the latest Open Road films bomb which opened at #5 to $4.9M. The film, a teenage dramatic take on Groundhog's Day, was clearly expecting many teen girls to not be able to or interested in seeing Logan but the strategy didn't pay off as the film was in the top 150 worst wide release openings ever. What audiences did see the film apparently weren't too impressed as it only scored a B on Cinemascore. With strong teen girl competition opening in two week with Beauty and the Beast it's likely the film will drop significantly. Still the budget for the film was only $5M, so it wasn't exactly a major play from Open Road but certainly doesn't help their recent string of flops.

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 #
Your Name	N/A	$331,336,802	Unk	27
Moonlight	$25,382,305	$31,056,350	$1.5M	20
Doctor Strange	$232,595,918	$676,900,562	$165M	18
Arrival	$100,498,000	$197,625,682	$47M	17
Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them	$233,551,595	$812,051,595	$180M	16
Moana	$246,898,402	$586,598,402	$150M	13
La La Land	$145,684,362	$396,384,362	$30M	13
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story	$529,844,792	$1,053,251,837	$200M	12
Sing	$268,171,530	$565,371,530	$75M	11
Split	$134,066,270	$240,166,270	$10M	7
John Wick: Chapter Two	$82,865,972	$144,365,972	$40M	4

Notable Film Closings

Title	Domestic Gross (Cume)	Worldwide Gross (Cume)	Budget
The Space Between Us	$7,885,294	$10,535,239	$30M

As always /r/boxoffice is a great place to share links and other conversations about box office news.

Also you can see the archive of all Box Office Week posts at /r/moviesboxoffice.

Submitted March 07, 2017 at 12:20AM by mi-16evil http://ift.tt/2mNJcQT