Sully, the story of a real-life pilot who landed his disabled jetliner on New York’s Hudson River, stayed atop the North American box office this weekend, industry estimates showed Sunday.
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Amidst glowing reviews and happy consumers, Tom Hanks’s Sully took first place again this weekend, dropping 37% from last weekend to an estimated $22M, bringing its total up to $70.5M.
The British-made film cost a relatively modest $35 million to make and should end up in the black thanks to the overseas box office, where it opened to a rousing $29.9 million from 38 markets, enough to top the foreign weekend chart during a relatively quiet weekend. The film arrives 17 years after “The Blair Witch Project”, one of the most profitable movies of all time.
“Sully” also seems to be robbing audiences from Universal’s “Bridget Jones’s Baby”, which earned $3.04 million Friday, heading to a third place, $8.7 million opening weekend, a figure roughly in line with the mediocre opening for the second film in the Renee Zellwellger franchise, 2004’s “Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason”. Fortunately the production budget was a mere $5 million, but this was certainly expected to perform much better than it did. The film opened to $1.3 million, likewise behind expectations. The debut marks the lowest in filmmaker Oliver Stone’s career.
A lot went wrong, starting with some bad reviews and a D CinemaScore. Internationally, Baby debuts at No. 1 in 24 markets, grossing just over $29 million from global territories – including a record-breaking run in the United Kingdom and Ireland, where it made $11.3 million while maintaining a 57 percent market share. Instead it finished with the worst opening of the franchise despite opening in 1,316 more theaters than the 2001 original, which opened with $10.7 million, and almost 2,400 more theaters than 2004’s Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason, which opened with $8.6 million. The $9.9 million movie has made an additional $31.7 million overseas, bringing its worldwide total to $107 million to date. Controversy over whether Edward Snowden is a heroic whistleblower or a traitorous leaker of intelligence secrets was sure to alienate many potential viewers, and the movie was expected to open somewhere around $10 million. Ouch. Also, Hillsong – Let Hope Rise opened in 816 theaters over the weekend and it came in 13th place with a commendable $1.3 million. In Zellweger’s case, you might even argue that the gap is longer, since it’s been 11 years since her last live-action box office hit, “Cinderella Man”.
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The stronger performance overseas follows a trend established by the first two installments, both of which grossed more than $200 million in global markets.
