'Beauty and the Beast' waltzes away with another $88.3M at the box office
LOS ANGELES — Not all reboots are created equal.
This weekend at the box office, nostalgia-driven fare was everywhere, producing both successful and underwhelming results.
On the high end, Disney's live-action Beauty and the Beast continued enchanting audiences in its second weekend in theaters, easily topping the charts with $88.3 million, according to studio estimates Sunday. On the low end, the raunchy, R-rated CHIPS made its debut in seventh place with $7.6 million.
In the middle was Power Rangers, which earned a solid $40.5 million to grab the No. 2 spot. The PG-13 take on the campy 1990s television show tells the origin story of the Power Rangers with a diverse teenage cast of relative newcomers.
Its audiences were 60% male, while Beauty and the Beast crowds remained largely female. The divide allowed both to succeed in the crowded marketplace.
Power Rangers didn't get the best reviews, but audiences gave it a promising A grade on CinemaScore, suggesting that it might have staying power.
CHIPS, on the other hand, underwhelmed both audiences and critics. Dax Shepard wrote, directed and starred in the action comedy based on the 1970s TV show about the California Highway Patrol.
Costing $25 million to produce, CHIPS wasn't the biggest risk, but its $7.6 million debut disappointed. The film also got a deathly B-minus from audiences on CinemaScore.
"Brand recognition will get you far — it gives you a leg up before you even start — but at the end of the day, it comes down to the movie itself," says Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst for comScore. "No matter how much brand equity they have with a particular title, the real test is: How do critics and audiences respond to that film?
"You still have to deliver a solid movie that will entice people to spend their hard-earned money to go see something that they already know, or already know about," he says.
That's where Disney has succeeded, with its latest remake earning $317 million in just 10 days in North American theaters.
"With Beauty and the Beast, there have been decades of goodwill and the Disney brand and so many more elements going into it than just the intellectual property," Dergarabedian says. "Disney makes it look easy. Others have had more challenges."
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Also this weekend, the sci-fi thriller Life failed to connect with audiences, debuting in fourth place with $12.6 million behind holdover Kong: Skull Island, which finished third with $14.4 million.
The R-rated space film stars Jake Gyllenhaal and Ryan Reynolds as astronauts who discover the alien life form they've brought on board might be dangerous.
Dergarabedian says part of the reason for its muted launch might be that recent space films, such as Passengers and Arrival, are available for home viewing. The much-anticipated Alien: Covenant and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 also are on the horizon.
Despite some flops, the March 2017 box office, which crossed $1 billion this weekend, has become the biggest March of all time, thanks to Logan, Skull Island, Get Out and Beauty and the Beast.
Final figures are expected Monday.