Jacob Hall

What do audiences want to see on President’s Day weekend? Apparently not The Great Wall, Fist Fight, and A Cure For Wellness, each of which opened to disappointing numbers. However, The LEGO Batman Movie, Fifty Shades Darker, John Wick: Chapter 2, Hidden Figures and even Split kept the box office above water, continuing to do strong business.

After a neck-and-neck race last weekend, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story has officially stepped aside to let Hidden Figures reign supreme. The crowd-pleasing drama about the black female mathematicians who assisted NASA in its early days topped the box office, leading a weekend that was otherwise all about films bursting out of limited release. The bulk of the new releases were not so fortunate.

Everyone knew that Rogue One: A Star Wars Story wasn’t going to match the opening weekend of Star Wars: The Force Awakens. That film had hype on its side, drawing off the power of a lengthy dry spell for fans and the presence of the original trilogy’s cast members. It’s unlikely that any Star Wars movie will match it ever again. With all of that said, the opening weekend of Rogue One should still be considered an enormous success, especially since these numbers would be nothing short of indisputably incredible if Star Wars wasn’t in the title.

Consider this the calm before the storm. Next weekend, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story will open and dominate both the box office and every headline, drowning out each and every other movie currently screening in theaters. In the meantime, Moana took advantage of this quiet window to win one more strong weekend while Office Christmas Party got off to a pretty good start.

Like any new Marvel Studios movie, Doctor Strange was destined to take the number one spot at the box office  —  it was really just a question of how much it would make. Ultimately, Benedict Cumberbatch’s Sorcerer Supreme surpassed expectations, topping the charts with an exceptional $84 million. But this was a strong weekend in general, with Trolls and Hacksaw Ridge performing well in second and third place.

Did anyone want a third Robert Langdon thriller? While The Da Vinci Code was a gigantic hit back in 2006, Angels and Demons made significantly less on both the domestic and international charts. And now, Inferno looks to answer that question with a painful whimper. No, nobody wanted a third Robert Langdon movie, and the film’s opening weekend makes that abundantly clear.

Just when you thought September was going to be a slow month at the box office, Clint Eastwood and Tom Hanks show up with Sully and make things interesting all over again. The feature film adaptation of the “Miracle on the Hudson” opened with huge numbers, benefiting from the pedigree of the talent involved and the lack of direct competition in the middle of a not-so-busy month.

Despite receiving overwhelmingly negative reviews, Suicide Squad opened with record-smashing numbers, obliterating the record set by Guardians of the Galaxy back in 2014. And yet, the box office of summer 2016 has taught us one thing: anything can happen after that opening weekend and it probably will. This certainly looks like a huge victory for Warner Bros. and their DC Extended Universe right now, but who knows what next week will bring?

This has been one of the strangest summers in recent memory when it comes to box office analysis, not because so many high profile movies have disappointed (although that has certainly been interesting), but because so many new releases are hanging out in the grey zone between hit and misfire. In an era where the success of so many movies is determined purely by opening weekend numbers, we’ve spent the past few months watching as movies has defied expectations after a weak opening or rode a solid opening into oblivion. The cut-and-dried successes can be counted on one hand.

It took a movie about adorable talking dogs and cats to dethrone the movie about the adorable talking fish. The Secret Life of Pets dominated the box office this weekend, making it the third 2016 family movie about chatty animals to make a huge splash. If this concept wasn’t as old as the animation medium itself, we could call this a trend.

Although the holiday weekend brought out a slew of new releases to compete for the top spot at the box office, this week’s top 10 was, once again, dominated by Finding Dory. The Legend of Tarzan, The Purge: Election Year and The BFG ultimately couldn’t quite match up to Pixar’s forgetful fish, but the final results were all over the place. This chart is very much a roller coaster of expectations being met and missed.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that Finding Dory opened at number one at the box office this week and did enormous business, but the folks at Disney and Pixar must be breathing a sigh of relief. After all, last year’s The Good Dinosaur was the first film to come out of the venerable animation studio that could be considered a legitimate box office disappointment, especially since it came in the wake of the massively successful Inside Out. The massive opening weekend for the sequel to Finding Nemo repositions Pixar in its rightful place on the top of the animated movie food chain.

A little movie called Captain America: Civl War came out this weekend and made the exact kind of money you’d expect it to make. The thirteenth film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe didn’t have the biggest opening in the series’ history, but it was close enough. It’s easily the biggest opening for a Captain America solo movie (albeit ballooned by a co-starring role for Iron Man) and it managed to open bigger than its chief rival this year, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. That’s certainly a win.

After last week’s stellar opening, it was clear that The Jungle Book was going to hold on to the number one spot at the box office this weekend. However, it wasn’t clear that it would spell complete and total doom for the weekend’s other new release, The Huntsman: Winter’s War, which debuted with very disappointing numbers in second place.

In most of these Weekend Box Office Reports, it’s clear who the victor will be. Even when the early estimates are a little off and the numbers shift between now and Monday, the basic layout of the top 10 is generally pretty accurate. But this week is a real race and the top two films are neck and neck, and we won’t know who will actually win this thing until tomorrow. But right now, early estimates have Melissa McCarthy’s new comedy The Boss barely edging out Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice by less than $50,000. That’s crazy and, whether it actually claims the top spot tomorrow or not, very bad for Batman v Superman.

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice was never not going to have an enormous opening weekend. Toxic reviews and mixed word of mouth mean nothing next to hype — that title alone guaranteed a record-breaking start. And right now, Zack Snyder’s superhero epic does look like a gigantic hit. However, this weekend is really all about the trailers and posters and Warner Bros.’ omnipresent marketing. The real challenge will be next weekend, when the film’s legs will be properly tested.

Pardon the pun, but Zootopia is a beast. Disney Animation’s new film held on to the number one spot at the box office for the third weekend in a row and made it look easy. Not even Allegiant, the third film in the Divergent series, could topple it. Could the film end up pulling Frozen numbers? Maybe. Possibly. We’ll have to see how strong it stands in the face of a couple of superheroes.

That sound you hear is the folks over at Disney popping a couple dozen bottles of champagne — Zootopia didn’t just open at number one at the box office, it had the biggest opening of any film in the history of Walt Disney Animation Studios, beating out 2014’s Frozen. Unfortunately, the rest of the newcomers didn’t fare quite as well, with London Has Fallen and Whiskey Tango Foxtrot limping into second and fourth place, respectively.

Deadpool ruled the box office for the second weekend in a row, following up its record-breaking opening with with a strong sophomore weekend that proved its initial success was no fluke. In fact, the three newcomers didn’t even stand a chance against this red-suited menace, as Risen, The Witch, and Race all found themselves punted further down the top 10.

20th Century Fox sat on Deadpool for six years before finally giving it a green light with a modest $58 million budget. After a lengthy and impressive marketing campaign that ensured everyone in the world knew the name Wade Wilson, box office tracking was looking strong with $55 million. And then the film actually opened, more than doubling that prediction, shattering a handful of records and blowing the doors off the comic book movie genre. This feels like a big deal. Oh, and Zoolander 2 also opened.