It’s a bright weekend for the box office as Project Hail Mary scores a touchdown, exceeding expectations with an opening of $80 million. For those who care, that’s by far the biggest opening for Amazon MGM Studios (I feel dumb even typing that) since the merger took place. It’s also one of the best premieres ever for a non-franchise/non-IP release. Mind you, tracking had Project Hail Mary in the $40-$50 million range, so this is a massive victory all around.
For once, hype worked. Amazon knew they had a fantastic movie here and held preview screenings to influencers and critics to get the positive buzz spinning early on. For weeks, I’ve been hearing about how amazing Project Hail Mary is. And once the “professional” reviews came in, it turns out none of that was hyperbole. Make no mistake, there’s now a very good chance this could become one of the strongest awards contenders of the year, and it’s only March (then again, Sinners came out in April, so it’s not unheard of). Someone at Disney is wondering why the fuck they fired Phil Lord and Chris Miller from Solo.
The great news is that since Project Hail Mary is an original film, it has potential to find an extremely wide audience. So the legs could be very long, even before The Super Mario Galaxy Movie and Michael get ready to absolutely dominate the box office in April.
But it’s not all sunshine this weekend, as Ready or Not 2: Here I Come was met with a collective “not” by many fans of the genre(s), only bringing in $9 million. And…I’m sorry, this is always how this one was going to perform. The first Ready or Not came out nearly seven years ago and was considered a box office disappointment, so I think people have been massively overestimating its impact on pop culture. Likewise, I think people also don’t realize that Radio Silence have never been the strongest at the box office despite their hipster reputation. They can bring in the bank on franchise flicks (Scream), but their original releases tend to be more niche (case in point, I saw Ready or Not with a small but completely baffled audience; none of them had any idea how they were supposed to react to it, making it a weirdly uncomfortable viewing experience).
So why are we even getting a Ready or Not sequel now? Disney apparently noticed the 2019 horror comedy performed well on streaming. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean that popularity is going to translate into cinematic returns. Heck, Here I Come couldn’t even make the top three, as the Bollywood blockbuster Dhurandhar: The Revenge claimed that spot. Granted, Fathom always charges premium price for these films–usually in the $25 range–but it’s still an impressive accomplishment, especially when you consider The Revenge is four hours long.
Finally, something called The Pout-Pout Fish opened. It managed to make it into the top ten with a take of only $500,000 and a per-venue average of $269. Amazingly, this is actually one of the better premieres for distributor Viva Pictures. Are they a money-laundering operation? How the fuck do they make a profit?
Anyway, the top ten, via Box Office Mojo
