It was a joyous Mother’s Day weekend for Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, as the fourth movie in the updated franchise just surprised everyone with its second-largest opening. Kingdom’s actual total of $58M exceeded all projections, including Boxoffice Pro ($40M-45M), Box Office Theory ($46M), The Numbers ($49M), and even Sunday’s estimated tracking ($56M). Kingdom’s opening only fell short of 2014’s Dawn of the Planet of the Apes ($72M). Boom!
But it isn’t all roses, as CinemaScore finally disclosed their rating on Saturday that could have an impact on future earnings. After three straight franchise scores of A-, Kingdom surprisingly only earned a ‘B’ score. Per The Hollywood Reporter: “Studio insiders aren’t overly concerned about the CinemaScore, noting that 85 percent of moviegoers gave it an A or a B. This suggests that a vocal minority dragged down the overall score by giving it a C or lower”. Still, this is a development that warrants monitoring. Our only three “major” releases of 2023 that scored less than an A- all suffered larger-than-desired drops in Weekends #2 and #3. And we all remember what happened to the first two.
| C Score | Opening | Weekend #2 | Weekend #3 | |
| Fast X | B+ | 67M | -65.6% | -58.3% |
| The Flash | B | 55M | -72.5% | -65.4% |
| Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny | B+ | 60M | -54.6% | -55.3% |
As for Not Another Church Movie, it was an absolutely horrible weekend where $391K earned from 1,108 theaters was a far cry from its projected $1.8M. The less we say the better.
Good news for Kelly… Well Go USA Entertainment (the independent distributor) reported box office grosses this weekend for The Last Stop in Yuma County. Bad news for Kelly… it was only $41K. And that’s even worse news for Tina as she now has early competition for the Bonehead Award. I will say that Yuma’s 98% RT score has me pretty intrigued, especially considering that the director Francis Galluppi is lined up to direct the next Evil Dead film. Unfortunately, Yuma isn’t playing in Jacksonville. Road trip to Tallahassee! (confirmed it’s playing at the CMX Fallschase)
Lastly, The Fall Guy didn’t get the strong hold it needed to ease any concerns. It actually added 6 screens to last weekend’s count, but just $13M in a 50.6% second weekend drop isn’t reassuring.
Next Weekend: 3 wide releases were selected, including our first “swing pick” of the summer that will impact half of the pool’s participants: IF (23 players). We also get The Strangers: Chapter 1 (1 player) and Back to Black (2 players). One note regarding Strangers… not only did I not realize that this was the first of THREE films being released through January 2025, but I also just learned that Renny Harlin is directing all three. Renny’s back! *mind blown*