Weekend Estimates: Civil War Sets New 2016 Benchmark with $181.8 Million Projected Weekend
May 8, 2016
Another weekend, another triumph at the box office for Disney. After a hattrick of wins for The Jungle Book, the studio’s Captain America: Civil War will top the chart this weekend with a year’s-best $181.8 million, according to the studio’s weekend projection, released on Sunday morning. Our model projects that it will fall just short of $180 million, but either way it will set easily a new best weekend in 2016, beating the $166 million debut of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, and record the fifth-best weekend of all time, landing in between The Avengers: Age of Ultron and Iron Man 3. The Marvel Cinematic Universe now claims four of the top six spots on the all-time list.
One other notable milestone for Steve Rogers this weekend is that, if it beats Iron Man 3’s $174 million, this is the best first weekend for a “non-Avengers” Marvel movie. The distinction is a fine one though, given that only Thor and Hulk are missing from this one, and Spider-Man makes a bonus appearance. And that perhaps highlights one of the issues from the franchise going forwards: it’s virtually impossible to top the previous franchise films with a truly standalone story. Clearly there’s significant mileage left in the Marvel Universe, but it does feel like the Infinity War films will be the natural end of this particular cycle.
With no other wide releases this weekend, there’s limited news from the rest of the chart, although Mother’s Day is projected to pull off the very unusual feat of having a bigger second weekend than its first. Open Road is projecting it will come in with $9 million, up 8% from last weekend. Predictably, Mother’s Day is looking particularly good for the film, but it’s been performing strongly all weekend.
Two films playing in limited release are also performing strongly. A Bigger Splash will earn around $110,000 for Fox Searchlight from just five theaters. Dheepan, meanwhile, will pick up $23,000 or so from two locations.
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Filed under: Weekend Estimates, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, The Jungle Book, Captain America: Civil War, Dheepan, A Bigger Splash, Mother’s Day, Marvel Cinematic Universe