Not surprisingly, the coronavirus took its first big bite out of the box office, giving Hollywood its worst weekend in 22 years.
The final tally for the top five films was only $31 million. That is is down 85% from the same weekend last year. This is similar to what happened in Italy where theaters saw a 75% drop in attendance following the corona outbreak there.
The number one film was once again Pixar’s Onward, which took in only $10.5 million in its second weekend.
Vin Diesel’s Bloodshot, which he was proclaiming to be the start of the Valiant comics film universe, debuted at only third with $9.3 million. How bad a start is that? It wasn’t even able to beat the new Christian based film I Still Believe, which came in at number 2 with $9.5 million.
Bloodshot was never expected to be a big hit anyway, but now at least Diesel and the studio have a scapegoat to blame on the films poor performance.
Pixar films typically print money, but Onward took an entire week to cross $100 globally. Corona could make it Pixar’s biggest box office flop.
It’s only going to get worse. New York City and Los Angeles, the two biggest film markets in the country, both announced shutdowns of all theaters in their cities. Both typically make up at least 10% of the weekly box office numbers for most movies, so this will have huge affects to all studios bottom line for the time being.
One of the things to keep an eye on will be how this affects pirating and illegal downloads. Since people won’t be able to get to theaters to see new releases, it only seems likely the numbers for sites like The Pirate Bay will only go up.
One of the upcoming films expected to be pushed back because of the coronavirus is Wonder Woman 1984. The movie’s official site had a clock counting down to its release, but in the last few days it has been removed, which is probably a strong sign it’s going to get delayed and may not come out until next year sometime.
Stay safe everyone!
