Box Office: Tyler Perry’s Final MADEA Movie Falls to HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON Week Two

Welcome to the Beat’s Weekend Box Office Wrap-Up!

There wasn’t a ton of optimism about the two movies getting wide releases on the first weekend of March, as people were still mostly talking about last Sunday’s Oscar winners.

Into that environment, Lionsgate opened Tyler Perry’s A Madea Family Funeral, reportedly the last Madea movie the Atlanta media mogul planned on making and starring in as the cross-dressing grandmother. Opening with $9.2 million on Friday, it was thought that Perry might achieve his sixth #1 movie in the 14 years he’s been making movies, but it fell just short of DreamWorks’ How To Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World in its second weekend.

The animated family film took in an estimated $30 million over the weekend, down 45% from its franchise-high opening weekend. With $97.7 million grossed so far, How to Train Your Dragon looks like it will cross the $100 million mark sometime this week. It’s currently ahead of Warner Bros’ own animated sequel The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part, which dropped to fourth place this weekend with $6.6 million and $91.7 million domestically.

A Madea Family Funeral opened in second place with $27 million in 2,442 theaters, the fourth best opening for Perry’s Madea series of movies that began with 2005’s Diary of a Mad Black Woman.  That’s slightly more than my prediction last week, but also higher than other projections who assumed Perry and Madea were done-for after 2017’s Boo 2! grossed about half the $90 million of Perry’s most successful movie, 2009’s Madea Goes to Jail. 

The James Cameron-produced Fox release Alita: Battle Angel dropped to third place with $7 million (down 43%). It has grossed $72.2 million domestically, which isn’t great but that’s compared to the $278 million made overseas, which should make it profitable.

After winning the Oscar for Best Picture Sunday night, Universal’s Green Book, starring Viggo Mortensen and two-time Oscar winner Mahershala Ali, was expanded into 2,641 theaters, just seven theaters shy of the movie’s widest release. The controversy surrounding the movie as well as people wanting to see an Oscar-winning movie they may have missed last year led to an estimated $4.7 million weekend. That’s the third best the movie has done since opening in November following its initial wide release and the January weekend after its Oscar nominations were announced. The Peter Farrelly-directed movie has grossed almost $76 million domestically, which is pretty respectable compared to its modest $23 million budget.

MGM and WWE Films’ Fighting with My Family dropped to sixth place with $4.7 million, only about $20,000 behind Green Book, with $15 million grossed so far. There’s a good chance that the Stephen Merchant movie about WWE superstar Paige might surpass the $18 million made by John Cena’s The Marine to become WWE Films’ highest-grossing movie.

The other wide release was the Neil Jordan-directed psychological thriller Greta (Focus Features), starring Chloë Grace Moretz and Isabelle Huppert, and it did not fare particularly well. Although it opened with an estimated $4.6 million, very close to my original prediction, it only opened in eighth place, surpassed by a lot of the stronger returning movies. With less than $1.5 million between the movies in fifth through eighth place, there could be a few changes once actual box office is reported Monday afternoon.

Sony Pictures Animation’s Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, which won the Animated Feature Oscar last Sunday, re-expanded into 2,404 theaters (with 1,661 theaters added), allowing it to add another est. $2.1 million to its domestic take. Even so, that wasn’t enough to reenter the top 10, though its $187.4 million domestic gross is quite impressive based on its $35.3 million opening last December.

NEON opened the moon mission doc Apollo 11 in 120 IMAX theaters, which was a huge gamble for a non-nature doc, but it did well with $1.6 million or $13,750 per theater, which is a good start for its nationwide expansion this Friday.

The Gaspar Noë thriller Climax also opened in five theaters in New York and L.A. to the tune of $121,655 or $24,331 per theater, the best theater average for the weekend.

This Week’s Top 10:

Rank Last Week Rank Movie Studio Weekend Gross % Change Total Gross
1 1 How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World DreamWorks/Universal $30 million -45% $97.7 million
2 New Tyler Perry’s A Madea Family Funeral Lionsgate $27 million N/A $27 million
3 2 Alita: Battle Angel 20th Century Fox $7 million -43% $72.2 million
4 3 The LEGO Movie 2 MGM/WWE $6.6 million -32% $91.7 million
5 11 Green Book Universal $4.7 million +121% $75.9 million
6 3 Fighting with My Family Paramount $4.7 million -40% $15 million
7 4 Isn’t It Romantic Universal $4.6 million -35% $40.3 million
8 New Greta Focus $4.6 million N/A $4.6 million
9 6 What Men Want Paramount $2.7 million -49% $49.6 million
10 7 Happy Death Day 2 U Universal $2.5 million -49% $25.2 million

The top 10 grossed an estimated $112 million which is down over $60 million from the same weekend last year when Black Panther was #1 for a second weekend in a row with $111.7 million. The New Line comedy Game Night opened in second place with $17 million and the sci-fi thriller Annihilation opened in fourth with a paltry $11 million.

Come back Wednesday for this week’s Box Office Preview of Marvel Studios’ highly-anticipated movie, starring Brie Larson.