Box Office Week - John Wick: Chapter 3 opens at #1 with $57M, almost double the opening of JW: Chapter 2. A Dog's Journey bombs at #4 with $8M. The Sun Is Also a Star tanks at #8 with $2.6M. Avengers: Endgame passes Avatar as the second highest grossing film domestic at $770.8M.


RankTitleDomestic Gross (Weekend)Worldwide Gross (Cume)Week #Percentage ChangeBudget1John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum$57,025,000$149,225,0001N/A$55M2Avengers: Endgame$29,411,000$2,614,805,8704-53.5%$356M3Pokemon: Detective Pikachu$24,815,000$287,401,8462-54.4%$150M4A Dog's Journey$8,000,000$23,500,0001N/AUNK5The Hustle$6,080,788$51,245,5122-53.3%$43MNotable Box Office StoriesJohn Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum - Not only have the titles in the John Wick series doubled in size each time (John Wick, John Wick: Chapter 2, John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum) but so has their opening weekends with the latest opening at #1 with $57M. That's almost double the opening of the previous film ($30M) which itself was double the opening of the first film ($15M). In fact this opening made more in a single weekend than the first film made in its entire run ($43M). This series has been the definition of a slow burn to major franchise and one of the more fascinating to watch. Before its release in 2014 the first film felt like your average run of the mill programmer with a boring title (fite me), an October R-rated action movie with a star on the wain. But John Wick surprised with great reviews and it held well enough to make a decent profit and justify the sequel. But that's when the film pulled something only the most special franchises like Pitch Perfect and Austin Powers did, find an insane second life on home viewing before the sequel. Wick became the internet's golden boy and by 2 the film moved from the harsher October months to the somewhat kinder February. The success of that film now means 3 opens in the beginning of summer, sandwiched between family friendly fair like Detective Pikachu and Aladdin.John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum - I mean just think about how a franchise that is all about gory new ways for a man in a suit to murder folks opened the same as a goddamn Pikachu movie. That's a truly crazy feat and a testament that if you make small scale movies that people enjoy and you just keep that quality going you can find success. It's pretty remarkable that this franchise turned the name John Wick into one of legendary film badass status. Now Wick is just part of the culture, becoming the new Chunk Norris in meme culture (yes I'm a thousand years old, I know) and even playing a pivotal part in the video game Fortnite. It's really quite an amazing feat, even more so that the budgets stay in their lane. John Wick 3 isn't a $150M action epic, it's a $55M well produced series of impressive set pieces. This is a franchise that knows why audiences come to it and doesn't over extend itself to become something it's not. And as long as the quality maintains I think we will definitely see the box office continue to rise. So if we keep with this idea of each film doubling the previous opening I look forward in 2025 to proudly announce that John Wick: Chapter 6 - Eternium: Dawn of the High Table: Part 2 broke the opening weekend record with a massive $480M opening.Avengers: Endgame - I swear I don't intend to keep writing about this film but damn son it just keeps making new records. This week the film became just the second film since Avatar's release to pass its domestic record, becoming the second highest film domestic at $770M. That gives it the #2 spot on both the domestic and worldwide spots. Speaking of, the film is creeping up on that worldwide record as the film stands at $2.61B, now $175M away from the $2.788B record set by Avatar. While not a monumental amount compared with how much money the film has made already, it's still quite a lot especially with potential major competition ahead. Endgame benefited a lot this week from Detective Pikachu under-performing overseas but this weekend sees the release of Aladdin. And look memes aside this is a major remake of a hit Disney film that has international appeal. It could easily eat into that Endgame run and cut it off right at the finish line. And yes what a tragedy, a Disney film might be too successful and cause another Disney film to keep from making the most money. Capitalism!A Dog's Journey - Guess the audience only wanted to see one heartwarming tale of watching a dog die over and over as the sequel to A Dog's Purpose opened this week to a terrible #4 with $8M. The film which continues the tale of Josh Gad voiced dogs violently dying was an...odd choice of a sequel to make. However, the first film, despite initial controversies, was a pretty good hit making $64.5M domestic and over $200M worldwide. So why did this fail so much? I think the main issue was titling it A Dog's Journey. See I don't know if you've noticed but the cinema has become really clogged up with A Dog's movies as there was also A Dog's Way Home that came out just four months ago and despite the same title structure and writer, it has no connection to this very weird franchise. And I know a lot of people who were confused which one was which or why there was so many films called A Dog's something. But to be frank this looks like the cheapest movie released in major theaters as it doesn't even have a known budget and I feel like Dennis Quaid was paid in denim jackets. So it will probably make enough to justify whatever meager costs there was but this will exists forever to me as the weirdest damn franchise as evidence by the hilariously named Box Office Mojo page A Dog's FranchiseThe Sun is Also a Star - The film that dared to point out that the sun is in fact a star, had a terrible opening at #8 with $2.6M this weekend. The film is actually not the world's least informative TED talk but in fact a romantic teen drama based on a popular YA novel. The film was clearly aimed directly at a teen audience as it stars two big actors from popular network TV shows, Yara Shahdi from Grown-ish and Charles Melton from Riverdale. However the thing about teens is they really don't give a crap about the theater, especially with actors they have probably seen almost exclusively through streaming platforms. It's rather bizarre to me this was a big WB release, even with a very low budget of $9M. This feels like a million Netflix movies being made for teens right now and I don't get why WB thought they would ever get kids to show up to something they get for free every week on Netflix. It will probably find a second life on streaming but that's the point, the theatrical market for this kind of film just doesn't really exist anymore.Films Reddit Wants to FollowThis is a segment where we keep a weekly tally of currently showing films that aren't in the Top 5 that fellow redditors want updates on. If you'd like me to add a film to this chart, make a comment in this thread.TitleDomestic Gross (Weekly)Domestic Gross (Cume)Worldwide Gross (Cume)BudgetWeek #Captain Marvel$2,452,440$425,143,519$1,125,947,720$152M11Us$380,420$174,681,800$253,781,800$20M9Hellboy$71,792$21,903,748$40,029,448$50M6Notable Film ClosingsN/AAs always r/boxoffice is a great place to share links and other conversations about box office news.Also you can see the archive of all Box Office Week posts at r/moviesboxoffice (which have recently been updated).My Letterboxd: http://bit.ly/2rSmMyn via /r/movies http://bit.ly/30tSn9u
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