James Cameron’s Na’Vi sent Sony’s Infected running away from the top spot at the box office as 20th Century Studios’ Avatar: Fire and Ash pulled in $17.2M over the four-day fifth weekend while 28 Days Years Later: The Bone Temple came in below its $20M+ tracking projections with a studio-reported $15M (by the way no other studio sees it there). Sony is calling 3-day at $13M, which makes it the second highest opening in the Danny Boyle-Alex Garland franchise after last June’s 28 Years Later ($30M).

Those numbers for The Bone Temple are a disappointment. Not Sony, not theaters, not anybody wanted to see the movie at that level, especially as the sole MLK weekend opener. While Sony is expecting to have a rebound year with Spider-Man: Brand New Day on the horizon, there’s been a lot that hasn’t worked for them, i.e. I Know What You Did Last Summer, Caught Stealing, A Big Bold Beautiful Journey, Karate Kid: Legends and now this. While the optics on Anaconda for a post Covid comedy has been alright, production cost to profit is dubious.

On the positive side, the Nia DaCosta-directed, Alex Garland-penned and Danny Boyle-produced fourth title in the British zombie series gets an A- CinemaScore, and a very good 72% definite recommend on Screen Engine/Comscore’s PostTrak, which is better than the B CinemaScore and 52% definite recommend on 28 Years Later. Will positive word of mouth kick-in? That’s a hard hill to climb when you start off at the box office this low.

Here’s the thing, while Sony was in need of franchises, and likes to prop auteur-driven content, this is a very niche horror, very gory, somewhat highbrow zombie series. It’s not a horror franchise for a mass audience. Factor in that Danny Boyle isn’t known for pumping out tentpoles; outside of global Oscar winning phenom Slumdog Millionaire ($378.4M WW), his movies don’t typically gross over $200M plus at the worldwide box office. While Bone Temple did well enough last summer, it wasn’t at a lofty level one would expect for a long-delayed series, plus the audience scores were alright, not through the roof. Clearly, there was no FOMO for a sequel six months later. Coming off of that, even if the follow-up here is getting a better audience reaction, it’s hard for any marketing campaign to build off and blast off the previous installment’s OK word of mouth. Factor in the box office algorithm that whenever a long-delayed sequel with any kind of fan appreciation opens (28 Years Later arriving in theaters 18 years after 28 Week Later), it’s apt to post a record debut for the franchise. Any subsequent sequel thereafter typically sees a decline in its opening, read 2020’s Bad Boys for Life posts the highest opening ever for the series at $62.5M, while the 2024 sequel Bad Boys: Ride or Die comes in -10% lower with a $56.5M opening. Another example: Star Wars: Force Awakens opens to $247.9M, while Last Jedi opens to $220M, -11% between openings. There’s a bigger gap between the domestic debuts here for Bone Temple and 28 Years Later at -56%.

Demos on Bone Temple are on par with that of last June’s 28 Years Later: Men over 25 showed up at both at 49%, followed by women over 25 at 26%, with slightly more proportionately men under 25 (17% this time to 13%), and fewer women under 25 (9% here versus 12%). Diversity demos were as follows: 50% Caucasian (up from 46%), 28% Hispanic and Latino (up from 25%), 8% Black (down from 12%) and 8% Asian American (down from 10%).

PLF screens are accounting for 36% of the weekend, with the West the best in what’s an overall even play across the country. AMC Burbank in Los Angeles is the leading location for the DaCosta movie at $58k (through Saturday night).

Let’s see where international comes in for Bone Temple, the movie having a 98% offshore footprint. Figuring that the net production cost of $63M is true, then it’s on global to save this sequel’s P&L. 28 Years Later finaled at $151.3M worldwide against a net production cost of $60M before P&A.

Meanwhile, Avatar: Fire and Ash‘s running global cume rises to $1.3 billion, while Zootopia 2 at $1.7 billion WW is the highest grossing MPA Animated title ever. Zootopia 2 by end of Monday looks to be less than $7M away from crossing $400M at the domestic B.O.

The entire Friday-Monday MLK weekend is coming in around $99M for all movies, which is +5% from last year’s $94.2M, but the third best take for the holiday stretch post Covid; 2023’s being the best when the fifth weekend Avatar: Way of Water and the second weekend of M3GAN ruled.

Chart updated with Sunday figures

Notable:

Row K’s first theatrical release:

Dead Man’s Wire (Row K) 1,101 theaters, Fri $416K Sat $353K Sun $265K 3-day $1M, 4-day $1.2M, Total $1.4M/Wk 2
This is considered to be a soft result.

 

via Deadline