Ticket sales fall 44% as virus fear grows
Here is all you need to know about the mindsets of moviegoers as the coronavirus pandemic intensifies: God beat a superhero at the weekend box office.
Seemingly every aspect of American life has been disrupted by the coronavirus pandemic, and the weekend ritual of watching a movie in the dark with strangers has been no exception.
Most U.S. cinemas remain open, with the two biggest chains, AMC and Regal, reducing seating capacity in auditoriums by 50% so that people could have at least one empty seat between them.
But fears about the coronavirus kept the masses at home. Domestic ticket sales totaled about $55.3 million, a 44% drop from last weekend, despite three new films — “Bloodshot,” “The Hunt” and “I Still Believe” — arriving in wide release.
It was the worst period for movie theaters in two decades, according to Comscore, which compiles box office data. The next lowest weekend was Sept. 15-17, 2000, when ticket sales totaled $54.5 million and the primary draws were holdovers like “The Watcher,” a serialkiller movie, and “Nurse Betty,” a dark comedy starring Renee Zellweger.
The result: Hollywood may have had its worst weekend since ticketing data started to be independently compiled in the 1980s.
The No. 1 movie was a holdover: “Onward,” the Disney-Pixar fantasy about two elf brothers who have an accident with magic, collected an estimated $10.5 million at 4,310 theaters in the U.S. and Canada — a 73% drop from its first weekend.
Pixar movies typically decline 30% to 45% from their first to their second weekends, demonstrating the impact of the virus fears on moviegoing.
In a surprise, at least for Hollywood, an under-theradar new release rooted in religion, “I Still Believe,” sold the most tickets of the newcomers. It collected about $9.5 million from 3,250 theaters.
The superhero movie “Bloodshot,” starring Vin Diesel, played on 2,861 screens in the U.S. and Canada and collected an estimated $9.3 million.