Box Office Week: Black Panther is #1 again for 5th weekend in a row with $27M, the first time a film has had five consecutive #1 weekends since Avatar. Tomb Raider opens okay at #2 with $23.5M, I Can Only Imagine surprises at #3 with $17M, and Love, Simon opens weak at #5 with $11.5M

Rank	Title	Domestic Gross (Weekend)	Worldwide Gross (Cume)	Week #
1	Black Panther	$27,024,000	$1,182,500,528	5
2	Tomb Raider	$17,064,640	$126,025,000	1
3	I Can Only Imagine	$16,940,000	$17,064,640	1
4	A Wrinkle in Time	$16,565,000	$71,659,654	2
5	Love, Simon	$11,500,000	$11,500,000	1

Notable Box Office Stories:

• Black Panther - The last three weeks were possibly the worst time for me to leave as Black Panther has become one of the most remarkable runaway box office success stories ever. After surprising with the 5th largest opening weekend in history the film continued to buck the trends by having the best legs for an MCU film ever, dropping less than 50% for every weekend since. The result is that now in its fifth weekend the film is yet again #1 with $27M (a drop of just 33.8%), the first film to have five consecutive #1 spots since Avatar in 2009. It has now become just the seventh film to gross over $600M domestic and is currently the 7th highest grossing film of all time. If that wasn't crazy enough, the film is now just $18M away from the lifetime domestic gross of The Avengers and will likely pass that milestone this week, making it the highest grossing superhero film of all time. The film is also currently at the #14 highest grossing film worldwide with $1.18B and is just $32M away from the worldwide gross of Iron Man 3 which when it passes will make it the highest grossing solo superhero film ever. However while Black Panther continues to hold amazingly well in the US, China seems done with the film which opened very strong with $65.1M but now has dropped in it's second weekend for a lifetime gross of $96M as Tomb Raider took the top spot. A lot of blame has been pointed at the Chinese movie reviewing website Douban which has been flooded with many anti-black reviews which could certainly be a factor but there's also lots of new foreign films being released there plus a mandatory viewing film that you can read about below in the sticky comment. Even without China the film is still doing amazingly well, becoming the highest grossing film ever in South Africa and still doing extremely well in the UK and South Korea. Next weekend should finally see the end of Black Panther's #1 run but expect it to continue to perform like it has for a long time. When a film grabs onto the zeitgeist like this it's impossible for it to ever let go.

• Tomb Raider - The film reboot based on the video game reboot of the popular action heroine had the dubious honor of coming into the weekend as the highest scoring video game film ever on Rotten Tomatoes while still being rated rotten. The results were a pretty okay #2 performance with $23.5M. While that opening is above Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life ($21.7M) it is far below the reigning box office champ of video game films Lara Croft: Tomb Raider ($47.7M). It's certainly not a great look that the film couldn't score #1 on Black Panther's 5th weekend, especially since it was just $4.5M short. However while US audiences seem less interested in Lara Croft as they were 17 years ago (feel old!), international audiences seem to still love the character as the film debuted overseas to a fantastic $102.5M. Most of that was lead by China where it grossed $41M opening weekend, but it also had good holds in Europe as well. However the film may catch a snag on international sales because next week sees the release of Pacific Rim: Uprising, a film that exists solely because the first film was a big hit overseas and is looking to repeat. However I do think there's a good chance of a sequel. While the film boasts a pretty high budget of $94M, the international appeal shows there's some name recognition there. Also, while the reviews were mostly mediocre, practically every critic praised lead Alicia Vikander's performance and her physical abilities. Let's not forget the impressive successes of Wonder Woman and the early Hunger Game films so Hollywood is really looking for the next action heroine and with some tweaking perhaps the next film could become the big hit this probably won't be.

• I Can Only Imagine - Why this made money I Can...not say for sure. Well I have some theories at least. The faith based film surprised opening at #3 with $17.1M in just 1,629 theaters, an impressive per theater average $10,476. Unlike many faith based films the film was produced by a big name studio, Lionsgate, and had a serious distribution house with Roadside Attractions which usually release Oscar fare like Manchester by the Sea and Mud. It also contains much more recognizable actors than most faith based films with Dennis Quaid and Cloris Leachman (okay not huge stars but bigger names than Dean Cain) plus a budget of $7M which for a faith based film is like the budget of a tentpole blockbuster. The reason so much support went into this project is that the title and premise of the film is based on the song "I Can Only Imagine" by MercyMe which is the most popular Christian music song of all time in terms of sales. That name power seems to really have brought out the crowds who ignored the scathing critical reviews and gave the film excellent word of mouth as it received an A+ rating on Cinemascore. This should really help the film maintain though weirdly it has a lot of competition coming up in the way of Paul, Apostle of Christ which opens next weekend followed by God's Not Dead 3: Revenge of the God which opens the weekend after. Still the strong opening was enough and it's a sign that we will likely see more major studios and distributor dip their toe into this lucrative market.

• Love, Simon - While Love, Simon received critical praise for creating a high school comedy starring a gay character, the audiences didn't seem as thrilled as the film opened pretty weak at #5 with $11.5M. It's unfortunate as the film is the first film ever released by a major studio to focus on a gay teenage romance, and with teens becoming more and more drawn to gay romances on television and film it seemed wise just in terms of business alone. Honestly the bigger issue likely isn't subject matter (the film received an A+ on Cinemascore so the core audience loves it and will likely push for it) as much as you now have a generation who's grown up on streaming. Teens do go out to the cinema but they are fickle and some times hard to target. Love, Simon will almost certainly find and audience but it might be in a way that doesn't make Fox a lot of money so it's a moot point. But certainly Simon could surprise as a Greatest Showman style hit so we'll just have to wait to see what happens next week.

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	$209,182,379	$757,682,379	$175M	17
Star Wars: The Last Jedi	$619,795,617	$1,332,011,651	$200M	14
The Greatest Showman	$169,744,618	$398,817,727	$84M	13
Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle	$400,273,598	$939,701,053	$90M	13
Annihilation	$1,700,000	$29,594,743	$40M	4

Notable Film Closings

Title	Domestic Gross	Worldwide Gross	Budget
Thor: Ragnarok	$315,058,289	$854,252,693	$180M
Justice League	$229,024,295	$657,924,295	$300M
Paddington 2	$40,442,052	$217,819,389	$50M
The Commuter	$36,343,858	$105,652,788	$40M

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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 19, 2018 at 11:18PM by mi-16evil http://ift.tt/2IDcKbd