James Cameron’s Na’Vi sent Sony’s Infected running away from the top spot at the box office as 20th Century Studios’ Avatar: Fire and Ash pulled in $17.2M over the four-day fifth weekend while 28 Days Years Later: The Bone Temple came in below its $20M+ tracking projections with a studio-reported $15M (by the way no other studio sees it there). Sony is calling 3-day at $13M, which makes it the second highest opening in the Danny Boyle-Alex Garland franchise after last June’s 28 Years Later ($30M).
Those numbers for The Bone Temple are a disappointment. Not Sony, not theaters, not anybody wanted to see the movie at that level, especially as the sole MLK weekend opener. While Sony is expecting to have a rebound year with Spider-Man: Brand New Day on the horizon, there’s been a lot that hasn’t worked for them, i.e. I Know What You Did Last Summer, Caught Stealing, A Big Bold Beautiful Journey, Karate Kid: Legends and now this. While the optics on Anaconda for a post Covid comedy has been alright, production cost to profit is dubious.
On the positive side, the Nia DaCosta-directed, Alex Garland-penned and Danny Boyle-produced fourth title in the British zombie series gets an A- CinemaScore, and a very good 72% definite recommend on Screen Engine/Comscore’s PostTrak, which is better than the B CinemaScore and 52% definite recommend on 28 Years Later. Will positive word of mouth kick-in? That’s a hard hill to climb when you start off at the box office this low.
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