“Pacific Rim: Uprising” Unseats “Black Panther” as No. 1 Movie

By Kip Mooney • On • In Weekend Box Office Report Weekend Box Office Report 0

BOX OFFICE REPORT

March 23-25, 2018

(estimates from BoxOfficeMojo.com)

TOP 5

Pacific Rim: Uprising  $28.0 million
Black Panther $16.6 million
I Can Only Imagine $13.3 million
Sherlock Gnomes $10.6 million
Tomb Raider $10.4 million

After five weeks of absolute dominance, Black Panther reached another record. But it's finally been unseated as the top movie in the country. Pacific Rim: Uprising took the No. 1 spot with an estimated $28 million. While that was enough to be the biggest movie of the weekend, it's less than the first film's debut five years ago, which only opened at No. 3 with $37.2 million.

Black Panther fell to No. 2, but with its excellent $16.6 million, it became the fifth-biggest movie ever, passing Star Wars: The Last Jedi and The Avengers. Even with big competition from Ready Player One next weekend, it still looks poised to pass both Jurassic World and Titanic by the time it completes its run to become the third-biggest movie of all time.

I Can Only Imagine stayed at No. 3, dropping less than 20 percent. By next week, it will have made seven times its budget, making it one of the most profitable movies of the year. Sherlock Gnomes only took in $10.6 million. That's well below the $25.3 million that Gnomeo and Juliet opened with seven years ago. Tomb Raider dropped to fifth with only $10.4 million.

Outside the top 5:

  • This Weekend's Indie Champ: Isle of Dogs, the latest hipster endeavor from Wes Anderson. His second animated film averaged $58,148 on its 27 screens. That's easily the best indie debut of the year thus far.
  • None of the other new releases even made a dent. Paul, Apostle of Christ fared best at No. 8 with just $5 million. Midnight Sun barely cracked the top 10, while Unsane couldn't even manage that.
  • Gringo and The Hurricane Heist joined the list of mega-flops. Both films shed more than 2,000 screens, dropping more than 90 percent in their third weekends.

Next week:

Ready Player One gets a head start on Thursday. What should be a slam dunk has struggled mightily to claim the cultural conversation. Steven Spielberg's adaptation of Ernest Cline's sci-fi best-seller will definitely be No. 1, but will almost certainly be less than Warner Bros. was hoping. So I'm going to hedge my bets and say it will take $65 million. Certainly not the world-beater it could be, but the second-best debut of the year. Tyler Perry's Acrimony and God's Not Dead 3 won't be any competition.

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About Kip Mooney

Kip Mooney
Like many film critics born during and after the 1980s, my hero is Roger Ebert. The man was already the best critic in the nation when he won the Pulitzer in 1975, but his indomitable spirit during and after his recent battle with cancer keeps me coming back to read not only his reviews but his insightful commentary on the everyday. But enough about a guy you know a lot about. I knew I was going to be a film critic—some would say a snob—in middle school, when I had to voraciously defend my position that The Royal Tenenbaums was only a million times better than Adam Sandler’s remake of Mr. Deeds. From then on, I would seek out Wes Anderson’s films and avoid Sandler’s like the plague. Still, I like to think of myself as a populist, and I’ll be just as likely to see the next superhero movie as the next Sundance sensation. The thing I most deplore in a movie is laziness. I’d much rather see movies with big ambitions try and fail than movies with no ambitions succeed at simply existing. I’m also a big advocate of fun-bad movies like The Room and most of Nicolas Cage’s work. In the past, I’ve written for The Dallas Morning News and the North Texas Daily, which I edited for a semester. I also contributed to Dallas-based Pegasus News, which in the circle of life, is now part of The Dallas Morning News, where I got my big break in 2007. Eventually, I’d love to write and talk about film full-time, but until that’s a viable career option, I work as an auditor for Wells Fargo. I hope to one day meet my hero, go to the Toronto International Film Festival, and compete on Jeopardy. Until then, I’m excited to share my love of film with you.

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