Friday Box Office Analysis
By Kim Hollis
February 15, 2020
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Nothing makes sense anymore.
After the movie now known as Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey debuted to pretty cruddy numbers last week, you'd be forgiven for expecting that a movie about video game hero Sonic the Hedgehog would fail just as spectacularly. It did not.
In fact, Sonic the Hedgehog made $21 million yesterday, the start of a long four-day holiday weekend. It's looking at a gaudy $65 million or so by the end of the four days. Credit Jim Carrey, or nostalgia, or maybe the people who gave the film an A Cinemascore. No, really!
Sonic the Hedgehog reported only around an $80-90 million budget, so Paramount Is going to be extremely pleased with the results here.
We have a bit of a surprise amongst our other new openers. The Photograph, a romance featuring Issa Rae and LaKeith Stanfield, earned $6.3 million yesterday. The one true romance of the Valentine's Day releases, it should earn $17 million over three days.
The latest Blumhouse joint, Fantasy Island, opened with $5.4 million amidst little fanfare. One of the more poorly reviewed films to emerge from the horror film studio, this one took the concept of the TV show from the 70s and made it scary. This one only had a $7 million budget, so Sony will be perfectly pleased with the result. $13.5 million for the three-day portion of the weekend sounds about right.
Our final new movie of the weekend is Downhill, a Will Ferrell/Julia Louis-Dreyfus collaboration based on the Swedish film Force Majeure. People hated the film and so did critics, and this one earned just $2.1 million, and should come in with about $6 million on the weekend if it's lucky.
With regard to award winners, Parasite did earn a fair amount from people eager to see what all the fuss is about. $1.7 million from Friday should be good enough for about $5 million on the weekend.
Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey declined 51 percent to $6.4 million. Its weekend total should be right at $20 million.
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