Saturday Update: ‘Panda’ Soft, ‘Finest Hours’ Drowns

Three new wide releases hit theaters this weekend, and they’re all coming in a bit below already soft expectations. Meanwhile, Jane Got a Gun imploded, while last weekends releases had above average holds.

Kung Fu Panda 3 took first with a slightly disappointing $10.5M on Friday. Among the other films in the series, that’s less than half of the originals $24.5M, and below the sequels $14.5M (which also had $6.2M from Thursday shows). Granted, those were both during the summer, when they are likely to have a bigger percentage of their weekends from Friday, but it’s still a little disappointing considering the total lack of competition. However, we’ve seen time and time again that competition is not the primary reason for a films success or failure. For the weekend, this may wind up with just under $40M.

In second place, Coast Guard thriller The Finest Hours failed with just $3.3M, giving it a weekend of just under $10M. With a hefty $70M-$80M production budget and little overseas appeal, this is a very disappointing debut. It seemed like the advantage of gaining lots of 3D and IMAX screens from Star Wars may have boosted this opening, but that turned out not to be the case. A solid A- Cinemascore might lead to decent holds, but there’s no way that this can be classified as a win.

All the way down in 7th, Fifty Shades of Black bombed with $2.2M on Friday. The $5M parody film received a light marketing campaign and an awful Rotten Tomatoes score, this isn’t overly surprising. It’ll be surprising if this gets much past $6M this weekend. It also received an atrocious C Cinemascore, meaning it will be lucky to double its opening weekend total.

If 7th place sounded bad, then 15th for Jane Got a Gun probably isn’t too good either. The $25M Western took in $277K from 1,210 theaters, giving it a hilariously bad per theater average of $229. The total lack of marketing and poor reviews had it out for this film, and its clear that the studio just wanted to bury it. It appears that they’ve succeeded.

As far as holdovers, The Boy dipped just 40%. That’s a great hold, even if it was likely a result of the major storm last weekend. The 5th Wave fell 46%, and Dirty Grandpa fell 49%. Even if those aren’t as good, they’re still solid holds all around.