Disney/Pixar's Onward saw an estimated $16.56M on Saturday, a growth of 36% over Friday's result, putting this morning's industry estimate at $40.4M. While that result is at the lower end of Pixar openings and the pic's tracking, even for an original movie, given how high the Emeryville, CA studio raises the bar, don't blame the coronavirus scare for these results. It's the film itself.
However, all theaters are open in the U.S. and Canada, and many of those in distribution tell me that if a four-quad movie like Disney's Mulan greatly misses its mark, that's when the industry will have an even greater concern whether coronavirus fears are impacting ticket sales stateside.
It regards to the coronavirus impacting overseas results for Onward, well, that's another story.Onward came in with $28M from 47 material territories, for a 62% footprint of the foreign market. That's far below the $40M-$55M our overseas prognosticators were forecasting. That puts the global start of Onward at a paltry $68M.
There are several signals that we're seeing that it's business as usual out there right now: First, Saturday's business was up for all movies over Friday, with the top 10 seeing an average 61% spike. More dollars were spent, hence more people went out. Next, the overall box office this weekend for all titles is now looking like it will do around $100.8M in the tenth frame of 2020, which is 1.4% higher than last weekend. Second, Onward's Friday came in better than expected, with $12.2M over the $11.3M we were spotting on Friday evening.
