Pokemon Detective Pikachu got off to a healthy start in Thursday night previews that ensures it should meet its tracking expectations for a $50-55 million start.
Detective Pikachu caught $5.7 million last night from showtimes beginning at 4 PM. It a great amount not far from New Line’s $5.9 million Thursday night for Shazam! which turned in a $20.3 million Friday for a $53.5 million 3-day. Considering that the target demo is not on vacation, that’s a pretty good number for previews and bodes well for the weekend where Saturday matinees are likely to go off. Pikachu also bests the preview nights of DreamWorks Animation’s How To Train Your Dragon 3 ($3 million), Sony’s Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse from December ($3.5 million) and Warner Bros.’ Lego Batman Move ($2.2 million). Pikachu cost $150 million before P&A which is steep but it’s likely to be a solid worldwide hit at the end of the day.
Avengers: Endgame is on its way to $700 million at the domestic box office by the end of the weekend and it pulled in another $7.5 million last night, bringing its domestic total to $660.4 million. It’ll surpass the gross of Black Panther ($700 million) to become the third highest grossing domestic release of all-time and that will have it $60 million away from Avatar’s $760.5 million final gross. Endgame will end up taking the second place spot but it’s likely to fall short of the $936.6 million final gross of The Force Awakens. The bigger story is the global take which is north of $2.3 billion as everyone watches and waits to see if the film can top the $2.78 billion of Avatar.
The Hustle also got started in Thursday night previews with a gross of $774,000. It’s not a bad start for the Anne Hathaway and Rebel Wilson comedy which is looking to surge on Sunday for Mother’s Day. Critics don’t love the film but I really think the demo won’t care about the 16% rotten score and will see the film to have fun and because they are fans of Anne Hathaway and Rebel Wilson.
Poms came out of the gate on Thursday night previews with $225,000 from approximately 2,000 screens with previews starting at 3 PM. Compared to other senior skewing movies, Poms was less than the previews nights of Book Club a year ago ($625,000), The Intern ($650,000) and Going in Style‘s ($600,000). It’s possible that it will be fighting the female demo with The Hustle but perhaps the older target demo comes out more throughout the weekend which will allow the film to tick up, particularly on Mother’s Day.
