Battle at the Box Office 3/18/24

It was an incredibly close competition between Kung Fu Panda 4 and Dune: Part Two this past weekend but Po managed to edge out Paul Atreides and keep the top spot at the box office for a second weekend.

Kung Fu Panda 4 took in another $30.1 million, dropping 48% from last weekend’s debut.  The movie now has $107.8 million domestically and $176.5 million worldwide.  Kung Fu Panda 4 is tracking ahead of the second and third films in the franchise daily and is just slightly behind the original Kung Fu Panda. The original movie ended up with $215.4 million domestically, unadjusted for inflation and if this fourth movie can keep pace just behind it, it could end up over $200 million domestically.

Dune: Part Two only dropped 38% from last weekend, pulling in another $28.5 million, which takes it to $204.7 million domestically and just shy of $500 million worldwide.  It is the biggest movie of 2024 worldwide and almost doubled what Dune made domestically and is closing in on topping what that movie made worldwide.  Dune: Part Two is about $1 million behind Oppenheimer’s third weekend and $24 million total behind where Oppenheimer was in the same time frame.

Arthur the King performed the best of the new releases with $7.5 million and took third place.  It’s below even some modest expectations and is probably going to be something of a disappointment.  For Mark Wahlberg, that opening is between Broken City and Rock Star. Arthur the King hasn’t had any sort of worldwide release yet.

Imaginary and Cabrini rounded out the top 5, with Imaginary actually holding well for a horror movie, dropping only 44% from last weekend’s opening and making another $5.6 million, taking it to $19 million domestically.

Love Lies Bleeding expanded wide this past weekend with 1,362 theaters and took 6th place with $2.4 million.  The movie has $2.7 million so far domestically (although it only played in 5 theaters last weekend).  There’s no CinemaScore for the movie but it does have an 89% audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes, so we’ll have to see if it has legs or if everyone interested saw it during this first wide-release weekend.

The other new releases were One Life, which opened in 8th place with $1.7 million, and The American Society of Magical Negroes, which opened in 9th place with $1.3 million.

The Per Theater average went to Exhuma, a Korean horror movie, which took in $20,171 in each of the 3 theaters it played in over the weekend.