Box Office Report for the Week of March 12

Predictably, Scream VI has slashed the box office this weekend and easily knocked out Creed III of first place. The sixth installment in the Scream franchise has the highest-grossing opening of the series yet, 35% above the first Scream and 48% above the previous film’s tally, with a $44.5 million domestic opening and a $67.1 million worldwide tally. The seventh sequel should be greenlit any day now for a 2024 release, which is what happened with the previous film.

Despite negative reviews, Scott Beck and Bryan Woods‘ 65 made a decent amount of money, opening in the third position with a $12.3 million domestic tally against a $45 million budget. The film did not have any press screenings until the day before opening day, which is usually not a good sign for judging the quality of the film. However, Adam Driver is an extremely bankable star, and his turn here may be the primary factor as to why audiences flocked to see it. I was pleasantly surprised that the screening I attended was mostly packed, and audiences seemed to have had a good time and reacted strongly to a few moments in the movie. Who knows? It could be a crowd-pleaser!

As for Champions, the movie fell short of impressing audiences. Opening in seventh place with a meager $5.1 million tally, the movie will likely not make much of an impression as of next week. Reviews have not been great, and word of mouth has been nonexistent. The film is a remake of the 2018 Spanish film Campeones (which I saw yesterday evening and thoroughly enjoyed), and the assumption for this one is that it’s a far inferior adaptation of the film than the original, which isn’t surprising considering that one of the Farrelly brothers directed it. Their track record has not been great, even if Peter Farrelly‘s Green Book controversially won Best Picture in 2019.

As for previously-released films, Creed III is holding up fairly strong, with a $27 million tally in its second week. The film has already been so successful that Amazon recently announced that it is planning a Creed-verse, with an anime series in development, alongside a few other spinoffs. And we now know how much money Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania will make, which will be close to $450 million. That’s not a great start to Phase Five and the future of the MCU, but I’m confident that the overhaul will pay off the studio in the long run.

Here’s the full list of the top ten films of the week:

1. Scream VI (Paramount): $44.5M – 3,675 theatres
2. Creed III (MGM): $27.1M (-53.4%) – 4,007 theatres
3. 65 (Sony): $12.3M – 3,405 theatres
4. Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (Disney): $7.0M (-45.4%) – 3,105 theatres
5. Cocaine Bear (Universal): $6.2M (-44.3%) – 3,204 theatres
6. Jesus Revolution (Lionsgate): $5.17M (-39.2%) – 2,575 theatres
7. Champions (Universal): $5.15M – 3,030 theatres
8. Avatar: The Way of Water (Disney): $2.7M (-26%) – 1,675 theatres
9. Puss in Boots: The Last Wish (Universal): $1.6M (-39.9%) – 1,816 theatres
10. Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre (Lionsgate): $1.2M (-59.2%) – 2,168 theatres

Source: Box Office Mojo