'Sonic The Hedgehog' Tops The Box Office With Best Opening Weekend Ever For A Video Game Movie
Sonic the Hedgehog has gone from receiving extremely unfavorable reactions from fans to earning the biggest box office opening weekend ever for a video game movie. The Blue Blur had no problem topping the box office, speeding past Birds of Prey with a $57 million three-day weekend, and a projected $68 million for the Valentine's Day/Presidents Day holiday weekend. But how did Birds of Prey hold up in second place? Get the rest of the box office results below.The Hollywood Reporter has the Sonic the Hedgehog box office not only topping the domestic charts, but raking in a solid $100 million internationally. On top of that, the movie has been landing well with fans, earning an "A" CinemaScore from opening day audiences and a 95% score from audiences on Rotten Tomatoes, even though it only landed 63% from critics. It'll be interesting to see if the movie has legs throughout the upcoming spring.
Coming in second place is Birds of Prey, which had some trouble living up to expectations from both box office analysts and Warner Bros. Pictures. It was hoped that a title change to Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey for SEO and movie ticketing websites might help boost the box office, and that very well could be the cast, but it still only earned $17 million for the three-day weekend and $19 million for the holiday weekend. That's a 48% drop, which has some people being rather negative, but that's actually not too bad.
For comparison, the R-rated Logan dropped 57.1% in its second weekend. Meanwhile, Deadpool and Deadpool 2 dropped 57.4% and 66% respectively. Granted, each of those movies had much bigger opening weekends, and they had more stiff competition during blockbuster summers. But it should be noted that Birds of Prey only has an estimated budget of $84 million, and it's getting close to earning double that, so even if the movie is underperforming, it's not the flop people are proclaiming it is.
Meanwhile, the PG-13 horror adaptation of the classic TV series Fantasy Island opened in third place. The movie earned $12.4 million for the three-day weekend and roughly $14 million estimated for the holiday. The fact that the movie earned a "C-" CinemaScore would seem to indicate that audiences aren't enjoying the movie very much. Plus, the movie wasn't screened for critics, which is always a bad sign, and now we know why. If you want to know more, read our full review.
Universal's romance The Photograph ended up in fourth place with a respectable $12.3 million three-day weekend and a projected $13.4 million for the holiday weekend. The movie did decently for a Valentine's Day weekend, especially one that didn't seem to be marketed very much far out in advance, and it's already close to earning its $15 million budget back.
Finally, wrapping up the top five, we have Bad Boys for Life hanging on with another $11.3 million over the three-day weekend and an estimated $12.8 million for the holiday. That's not bad for a movie that opened back in the middle of January, and when all is said and done, I think Sony Pictures will be very keen to follow it up with a fourth installment of the franchise.
One last thing to note: the expanded release of Best Picture winner Parasite resulted in a big box office boost. The South Korean film from director Bong Joon-ho landed $5.5 million for the three-day weekend, which would be the biggest weekend the movie has had since opening in theaters last fall, and a projected $6.7 million for the holiday. It even surpassed the opening of Downhill with Will Ferrell and Julia Louis-Dreyfus, which opened on 2,301 screens, but only earned $4.7 million for the three-day weekend.