Weekend box office: 'A Quiet Place' more than doubles predictions, demolishes competition

Weekend box office April 6-8, 2018

SALT LAKE CITY (KUTV) - Even the most robust predictions for “A Quiet Place” came up short this weekend as the $17-million film directed by John Krasinski is expected to finish with $50 million. Paramount Pictures was predicting a total in the high teens; experts went as high as $35 million. Clearly, they were all wrong. If anyone at Paramount Pictures is crying today, they are tears of joy.

Last June, "Transformers: The Last Knight," a film with a budget of nearly $220 million, had an opening weekend of $44.6 million. "A Quiet Place" is unlikely to match "The Last Knight" with a worldwide total of $600 million, but the fact that it was able to beat the massively popular franchise's mid-summer opening is staggering (in the best of ways).

Overseas the film had a modest opening of $21 million for a worldwide total of $71 million.

I rather enjoyed “A Quiet Place,” a horror film with sci-fi elements that finds a family living in solitude and fear when a blind alien race with heightened hearing abilities invades the planet and wipes out the vast majority of the population. It’s essentially a silent film with one of the best sound mixes you’ll ever hear. It’s still early in the year, but this is certainly one of my favorite films thus far and will likely finish the year in my top 10.

“Ready Player One” held nicely and will finish the weekend with $25 million. That pushes the film’s domestic total to $96.9 million. That moves the worldwide total to $391 million. Welcome back to the limelight, Mr. Steven Spielberg.

In third place is “Blockers,” the adult comedy about a trio of parents intent on keeping their daughters from losing their virginity on prom night, with $21 million. That almost covers the film’s budget. It’s going to make money; the question now is how well it will hold over the next couple of weeks. Are we talking a massive hit or a modest success?

Over the weekend “Black Panther” earned $8.4 million for a domestic total of $665 million and has now passed “Titanic” to become the third-largest domestic release of all-time. That’s based on dollars, rather than number of tickets sold, but that doesn’t make the feat any less impressive. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go watch that YouTube video about how “Black Panther” is going to be a box office disaster because there aren’t enough African Americans in America to support a superhero film with a black protagonist.

"I Can Only Imagine" continues its remarkable run as the faith-based film will earn $8.3 million. The $7-millon film has now earned $69 million.

From 554 screens, the highly regarded animated film “Isle of Dogs” brought home $4.6 million and now has a domestic total of $12 million. Next week sees the film expand nationwide.