‘Shazam!’ Striking Lightning With $49M; ‘Pet Sematary’ Digging Up $23M+ – Midday Box Office

FRIDAY MIDDAY: New Line/DC’s Shazam! is currently at this point in time looking at a $18.9M Friday, a 3-day of $49M and including previews a running total of $52.3M. Note late night business yesterday pushed its Thursday higher, so we might see the same again tonight, plus Saturday matinees, natch.

Paramount’s Pet Sematary is drawing in $9.5M today and a 3-day opening of $23.1M.

All Friday figures above include last night’s previews.

Disney’s Dumbo is looking at a $4.6M second Friday, -70% for a second weekend of $17M, -63%, steep for a family film. 10-day by EOD Sunday will be $75M.

Universal’s Us owns fourth with a third Friday of $4.75M, -53%, a third 3-day of $15.6M, -53% –a solid hold– and a running total of $154.1M.

Disney’s Captain Marvel takes 5th with $14.2M, -31% in weekend 5, for a running total by end of Sunday of $375.6M.

STX’s opener The Best of Enemies is seeing $2M today, for a 3-day of $5.9M.

 

FRIDAY AM UPDATE following Thursday PM exclusive: New Line/DC’s Shazam! is higher than what we saw soaring to $5.9M in U.S./Canada Thursday previews. Add in those paid Fandango sneaks and the DC guy has $9.2M already at the domestic B.O. Nancy will be getting an overseas update in a bit. Lots of late night business pushed Shazam! to higher figures last night from the early $4M+ we first spotted.

Imax and premium large format drove 31% of Shazam!‘s business last night. PostTrak was 83% positive with males turning up big.

Shazam!‘s Thursday is just under the $6.4M that Disney/Marvel’s Ant-Man did which repped 28% of its $22.6M first day Friday, yielding a $57.2M opening. Shazam! also knocks down the $3.75M made by Ready Player One‘s Wednesday night preview during last year’s Holy Week. Today there’s 16% K-12 schools off, and 12% colleges, so spring break still has a pulse, but all that changes by Monday when K-12 simmers down to 3% and college is fully in session. K-12 will go back on spring break at around a 20%-tile during the April 15 Holy week reaching 74% off on Good Friday. Shazam! carries a net production cost of around $100M, and after its global launch, the current expectation is that it should fare quite well in the long run.

Paramount’s Pet Sematary drew $2.3M in previews at 2,942 locations. The pic carries a low net production cost of $20M. Next to horror comps, that’s higher than the $1.8M which Get Out pulled in, the $2M made by Split and the $1.9M made by Sony’s remake of Evil Dead. 

STX reports that its Civil Rights drama The Best of Enemies drew $265K at 1,440 theaters. The Robin Bissell directed and scripted movie adapted from Osha Gray Davidson. That result is a tad higher than what Focus Features’ Race did making $205K at 1,800 locations in Feb. 2016. Focus went wider with Race at 2,369 and opened to $7.3M,

 

EXCLUSIVE: New Line/DC’s Shazam! is shooting toward an estimated $4M-$4.4M tonight from U.S./Canada shows starting at 4PM, a result that’s around what Captain America: First Avenger made ($4M off shows starting at midnight back in 2011, $25.7M Friday, $65M opening) and higher than Sony’s Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse ($3.5M from 5PM shows, $12.7M Friday, $35.3M opening) in Thursday night previews. As we always note, these estimates come from Deadline sources, not Warner Bros.

 

Tracking has suggested that the film will open between $45M-$50M in U.S./Canada. While Shazam! isn’t deep-deep DC universe, he arguably doesn’t have the massive popularity of Superman who has been kept alive through movies and cartoons. While Superman has continually been kept alive by DC, Shazam goes in fits and starts. While there was the 2010 DC direct to DVD toon Superman/Shazam! The Return of Black Adam, anyone over 45 will certainly remember watching Shazam! as a kid in the mid ’70s on TV with Jackson Bostwick in the title role.

Nonetheless, this was a means by New Line/DC to expand the comic book brand on screen with a more comedic, family-skewing superhero, much like Marvel did for its universe with 2015’s Ant-Man (which posted $6.4M in previews). We’ve heard that the social media heat on this David F. Sandberg-directed movie has been rising. Pic’s Rotten Tomatoes score is at a great 93% positive, and then there were those paid previews which reached a record $3.3M (Warners will add those to whatever is made here tonight, so figure around $7.7M by tomorrow AM). String all these factors together and there’s a lot of momentum that the Bill Parker and C. C. Beck-created superhero will over-index in its 3-day start. Theater count is at 4,217 for tomorrow.

Shazam! bowed abroad yesterday in France, Korea, Italy and Sweden and by tomorrow will be in all offshore markets, including China, but save Japan which goes April 19.

A lack of familiarity with the character abroad is not expected to have a major impact. Sources are seeing the international opening in the $100M range with some more aggressive figures up as high as $120M. All in a global blast-off between $145M-$170M. Anticipation is high in China, in the $50M zone, and with the benefit of a major holiday on Friday. April 5 kicks off the Qingming Festival, also known as Tomb Sweeping Day, which was an extra boon for WB’s Ready Player One last year.

The thinking is that there’s a lot of good will built up worldwide after the outsize success of WB/DC’s Aquaman ($335M domestic, $812.1M overseas, $1.1 billino WW) and that folks are seeking something new. What’s more, as this film skews younger, the soft performance of last weekend’s Dumbo should open up some space for this well-reviewed Big-meets-Superman story. The family elements should also work to hook markets that lean into this type of fare.

The best comps for Shazam overseas look to be the original Ant-Man and Guardians Of The Galaxy. However, those films had different release patterns so the debuts are not apples-to-apples. At unadjusted rates, Ant-Man finaled with $339M internationally and GOTG was $440M.

Shazam! star Zachary Levi recently traveled to China to promote the movie. He’s known locally for the Thor movies, and also has a following in the market. A premiere was also held in London on March 20 and Sandberg, who is Swedish, did some local promotion in his native country.

Also opening on Friday is Paramount’s closing night film from SXSW, the latest rendition of Stephen King’s Pet Sematary. Early buzz is that Thursday night showtimes which kicked off at 7PM are earning $2M+ per industry estimates. Again those numbers could fluctuate. Currently those figures for the R-rated film are close to Sony’s 2013 remake of Evil Dead ($1.9M Thursday, $11.9M Friday, $25.7M opening). Par is hoping for a $20M-plus start for the Kevin Kolsch-Dennis Widmyer-directed horror pic. Pet Sematary plays at 3,585 tomorrow. RT is at 74% fresh.  Pet Sematary will be present in 48 off shore markets this weekend (73% of ultimate) including:  Argentina, Australia, Austria, Bolivia, Bulgaria, Chile, Colombia, Croatia, Cyprus, Denmark, Ecuador, Egypt, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, Indonesia, Israel, Lebanon, Lithuania, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Others Middle East, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Singapore, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland – G, Turkey, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, Uruguay, Venezuela.

STX has the $10M-bio drama The Best of Enemies starring Taraji P. Henson as Civil Rights activist Ann Atwater who faces off with C.P. Ellis (Sam Rockwell), Exalted Cyclops of the Ku Klux Klan, in 1971 Durham, North Carolina over the issue of school integration. The pic, which will widen to 1,705 locations tomorrow, is estimated to open in the mid single digits. Previews started tonight at 7PM. Critics are hard on the pic at 57% Rotten.