Box Office Report for the Week of March 15

It was a pretty diversified weekend at the box office, with Hoppers reigning supreme once more, adding $28.5 million to its global tally of $165 million. There were several new releases this weekend, and each did relatively well, given their budget and target audience.

First, Vanessa Caswill‘s adaptation of Colleen Hoover‘s Reminders of Him did very well, with the author’s source material carving out a space in Hollywood in the wake of the box-office success of It Ends with Us. It’s also the most well-received adaptation of the bunch, which might have helped bolster interest in the film, which opened with $18.2 million at the domestic box office. The film won’t be the only Colleen Hoover adaptation released this year, with Verity set to hit cinemas on October 2.

Ian Tuason‘s undertone also had a great weekend, making $9.3 million on a $500,000 budget. This is the best debut for an independent film so far this year, bolstered by a creative marketing campaign and (very) strong word of mouth following its world premiere at the Fantasia International Film Festival, which led A24 to eventually pick up the movie. Following a bit of retooling, the film premiered at Sundance, generating even more buzz before its March 13th release.

We’ll see how it’ll leg out in the weeks to come, but the job is already done for Tuason, who is now signed on to helm a reboot in the Paranormal Activity franchise for Paramount. If there’s one person who is right for the job of taking the series in a newer, fresher direction, it’s definitely the guy whose film is the first to genuinely terrify me in at least a decade…

There were also plenty of new releases this weekend, with the 35th anniversary reissue of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze making $1.4 million, and, more impressively, the 4K remaster of Hayao Miyazaki’s Kiki’s Delivery Service, which was exclusively released in IMAX, garnering $1.6 million in only 249 venues!

Late last year, IMAX and GKIDS announced they would sporadically re-release several Studio Ghibli films in the wake of Princess Mononoke‘s success, and it already looks like it has paid off, with reissues also announced for Whisper of the Heart and The Secret World of Arrietty in April and May. Most screenings in my local cinema are either almost or fully sold out, and one would expect subsequent re-releases to have the same effect.

In any event, rediscovering these classics on IMAX puts them in a very different perspective than at home, and seeing Kiki’s on such a large canvas made me believe in the big screen’s potential to continue moving me for a long time to come…

Here is the full list of the top ten films of the weekend:

1. Hoppers (Disney): $28.5M (-37%) – 4,000 theatres
2. Reminders of Him (Universal): $18.2M – 3,402 theatres
3. undertone (A24): $9.3M – 2,570 theatres
4. Scream 7 (Paramount): $8.3M (-51%) – 3,243 theatres
5. GOAT (Sony): $4.7M (-27%) – 2,946 theatres
6. The Bride! (Warner Bros): $2.1M (-70%) – 3,304 theatres
7. Kiki’s Delivery Service – 4K IMAX re-release (GKIDS): $1.6M – 249 theatres
8. Wuthering Heights (Warner Bros): $1.6M (-55%) – 1,901 theatres
9. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze – 35th anniversary re-release (Warner Bros): $1.4M – 1,372 theatres
10. Crime 101 (Amazon MGM Studios): $1.1M (-44%) – 1,310 theatres

Source: Comscore