" La La Land," the movie with the most nominations (a record-tying 14), saw the widest expansion, adding 1,271 screens for a total of 3,136. With last Tuesday's announcement of the Academy Award nominations, several nominated movies took advantage of their good fortune and added theaters this weekend.
Despite weak reviews, "Purpose" earned an A at CinemaScore, indicating excellent word-of-mouth. "Resident Evil," then, drew an audience that was 56 percent male.Īs the only new child-friendly film in multiplexes, the PG-rated "Purpose" was also a hit with families of kids under 13 such families made up 47 percent of the "Purpose" crowd. Women traditionally dominate the horror audience, but clearly, they were less interested in watching a post-apocalyptic action heroine than a heartwarming story about dogs. What's more, it played well among women, who made up 56 percent of the audience. Actually, not so much.ĭespite all the news coverage of the video, which the filmmakers claimed did not show the dog being mistreated, the movie slightly outperformed expectations. Many thought the recent video that allegedly showed a dog being abused during the shoot of "A Dog's Purpose" would lead to a boycott that would hurt the film's sales. "Split" doesn't have stellar word-of-mouth (just a B+ grade at CinemaScore), but its word-of-mouth is better than that of "Resident Evil" (CinemaScore audiences gave it a B). As a result, it held onto all but 34 percent of last weekend's business, an unusually strong hold for both the genre and the director. But "Split" added 161 screens this weekend, for a total of 3,199. Usually, horror audiences tend to crowd the opening weekend of a new scary movie and then drop off quickly, which is why analysts expected "Split" to suffer a second-weekend drop of about 60 percent, to below $20 million. Or you could argue that the horror crowd simply found a movie they really liked in M. "Resident Evil" had the poor timing to come along at the tail end of a wave of January horror movies, so you could argue that the market is saturated. For this kind of horror-action franchise, especially one that appeals primarily to viewers under 25, that's an eternity.įor an example, you have to look back only three weeks, to the failure of the very similar " Underworld: Blood Wars," another female-led, modestly-budgeted horror-action sequel from Sony's Screen Gems division that came five years after its predecessor and opened just under $14 million. It's been five years since the last "Resident Evil" movie, the longest gap yet between installments.
So, what went wrong? Turns out "Resident Evil" found itself up against a perfect winter storm of unfavorable conditions. With six-week-old drama " Hidden Figures" coming in third with an estimated $14.0 million, "Resident Evil" had to settle for a fourth-place premiere. Instead, "Split" easily repeated on top with an estimated $26.3 million, while "Purpose" scored an estimated $18.4 million. So it's no wonder pundits expected it to challenge both last weekend's winner, " Split," and family newcomer " A Dog's Purpose," for chart supremacy, with a likely finish just under $20 million. Milla Jovovich's Alice remains the rare action heroine who sells tickets to a predominantly male audience. The strongest and longest-lasting of all video game-inspired movie series, "Resident Evil" has grossed close to $1 billion worldwide. Did you believe that " Resident Evil: The Final Chapter" would really be the franchise's final chapter? Probably not, but after this weekend's shockingly dismal domestic debut, the lowest of all six movies in the franchise's 15-year history, it could be the last after all.
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