Box Office Report for the Week of March 29

It’s another major weekend for Phil Lord and Christopher Miller‘s Project Hail Mary. The movie has officially become Amazon MGM Studios’ highest-grossing movie ever, arriving just in time as the studio is making considerable moves to provide a full theatrical slate for the first time since Jeff Bezos acquired the historic Hollywood studio for $8 billion.

Making $54.5 million this weekend, only a 32% drop, the movie has now grossed $301 million globally and is on track to finish its run with at least $500 million, a major win all around. According to box-office analyst Gitesh Pandya, 20% of this weekend’s gross also came from IMAX screens, another significant marker that if you want your blockbusters to perform, Premium Large Formats are a must.

With Jumanji 5 (we have to count Zathura when talking about this franchise) moving from December 11 to Christmas Day, there is a golden opportunity for Disney to move up the release of Avengers: Doomsday by a week and secure IMAX exclusivity for that period before Dune: Part Three takes over. At this point, I’m fully convinced this is a matter of “when,” not “if,” because The Mouse would be absolute fools to not capitalize this momentous opportunity to bolster Doomsday‘s chances of becoming a potentially bigger hit than it will be. Plus, both Infinity War and Endgame opened a week before their scheduled release dates…it’s all coming together…

On the other side of the spectrum, Kirill Sokolov‘s They Will Kill You sees Warner Bros. with its second box office flop in a row, grossing $5 million domestically, out of a $20 million budget for a global tally of $9 million. It didn’t help that the movie came out a week after Ready or Not 2: Here I Come, which has a very similar plot, and also flopped. Perhaps the appetite for Satanic cult movies is no longer there, but it’s not great for the studio that has had such an incredible year, with record-setting Oscar nominations for Sinners and One Battle After Another, which snagged the top prize.

It’s now being sold by Paramount-Skydance, but this merger is, as expected, facing significant regulatory hurdles, with the shareholder vote set to take place soon.

Next week is the Easter holidays, and a massive juggernaut that is The Super Mario Galaxy Movie could break all kinds of records and become the year’s first movie to make over $1 billion worldwide, or very close. If the success of the first film is any indication, we’re in for a massive weekend…

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

1. Project Hail Mary (Amazon MGM Studios): $54.5M (-32%) – 4,077 theatres
2. Hoppers (Disney): $12.2M (-31%) – 3,650 theatres
3. They Will Kill You (Warner Bros.): $5.0M – 2,778 theatres
4. Dhurandhar The Revenge (Moviegoers Entertainment Ltd): $4.8M (-52%) – 987 theatres
5. Reminders of Him (Universal): $4.7M (-41%) – 3,181 theatres
6. Ready or Not 2: Here I Come (Disney): $4.0M (-56%) – 3,010 theatres
7. Scream 7 (Paramount): $2.6M (-40%) – 2,345 theatres
8. GOAT (Sony): $2.2M (-36%) – 2,246 theatres
9. undertone (A24): $1.6M (-45%) – 1,852 theatres
10. Forbidden Fruits (IFC): $1.1M – 1,525 theatres

Source: Comscore