Box Office Update: Mario in first with $56 Million, Evil Dead Rise coming in strong with estimated $22 million

Evil Dead Rise looks to be solid counter programming to the third week of The Super Mario Bros. Movie.

Much to the surprise of no one, The Super Mario Bros. Movie is coming in well ahead of the competition in its third week of release with what is, as of right now, projected to be a $56 million weekend. I stipulate that that number is “as of right now” because for the last two weeks Super Mario Bros has blown past projections. The international box office for the film is currently at at $725.7 million, putting it over the worldwide totals of Sonic The Hedgehog and Sonic The Hedgehog 2… combined (the two films accumulated $725.1 million total.) With no competition at the box office until Guardians of the Galaxy vol 3 hits on May 5, you can expect Mario to dominate the charts for another two weeks.

Second place looks to be the newest entry in the iconic horror franchise Evil Dead Rise with what is projected to be around $22 million after grabbing $2.5 million on Thursday. That is a pretty solid number for an over forty year old franchise, especially when you consider last week saw two new horror films under-perform. Horror films are generally front loaded, so all eyes will be on what type of drop the blood soaked film sees on Saturday night to see if the film hits that $22 million mark or falls short.

Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant, which is the film’s official title just in case you thought the movie was about warlocks, is coming in around $6 million. Although never destined to be a juggernaut, I must sing this films praises. It is one of the best war movies I think I have ever seen with performances by Jake Gyllenhaal and Dar Salim that are award caliber. Add to that a score by Christopher Benstead that will more than likely, tragically, be overlooked come Oscar time as this film is filled with pieces of music that were tremendous and added to the tension you were witnessing on screen. Luckily Benstead already has an Oscar as part of the Sound Mixing team on Gravity. I love that Guy Ritchie has shown the range of his talent this year with last months Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre being a more comedic R rated action film and this film being a gritty, tense, war film with not a lot of humor. Both films will undoubtedly make my year end top ten list. Do yourself a favor, go see this film on the big screen, it is well worth the money.

Rounding out the top five look to be John Wick: Chapter 4 with an estimated $5.3 million making it the highest grossing film in the franchise as it has pulled in over $352.7 million worldwide, surpassing the $328.3 taken in by Chapter 3. It looks like it will be a photo finish for fifth place with Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves and Air both expected to finish with slightly over $5 million. The expansion of Ari Aster’s Beau is Afraid is looking at just under $4 million for the weekend while Chevalier is seeing just over $1 million. 

Do you have plans on seeing a delightful feature film in theaters this weekend or are the streaming releases of Broken Lizard’s Quasi (on Hulu) and the Ana De Armas/ Chris Evans action film Ghosted (on Netflix) enough entertainment for you? (You can check out our own Alex Maidy’s review of Ghosted here) Let us know in the comments, and don’t forget to check back tomorrow when we have a full rundown of this weeks box office numbers.