When The Greatest Showman first hit theaters a couple of weeks ago, it had some major competition at the box office. Star Wars: The Last Jedi was still dominating in its second week, and The Greatest Showman actually landed in fourth place, after Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle and Pitch Perfect 3. Despite being a bit slow out of the gate, The Greatest Showman has just hit a box office record for biggest hold from weekend to weekend. Here's what happened.
During its first week in theaters, The Greatest Showman sold enough tickets to earn $19 million. However, that's a six-day total that includes weekdays. During its first weekend, it actually only made $8.8 million. Then, although it was still in fourth place domestically during its second weekend, the movie made $15.2 million, a 72% increase over its first opening weekend. Per Forbes, it's the best hold for a movie playing in over 3,000 theaters. In addition, it's also the best hold for a large release movie where the opening "weekend" was technically a week due to a holiday. In a world where a lot of films drop 50% or more at the box office after the opening weekend, this is great news.
It also theoretically means word of mouth is propelling The Greatest Showman forward. Although reviews have not been super kind to the Hugh Jackman starrer, the musical has a perfect A Cinemascore, and is propelled forward by brilliant visuals not to mention some songs that will get stuck in your head for a day or more. It has timeline issues in terms of no one aging and the whole plot seemingly happening in a short span of time, but the rest is really fun and bright and very different from the rest of the stuff being offered at the box office right now. It's also a PG offering for families.
So far, The Greatest Showman has made just under $84 million at the box office, counting both domestic and foreign totals. The movie, interestingly enough, cost $84 million to make before advertising, so the musical flick does have some ground to cover before it actually starts making money for the studio. However, thanks to word of mouth being so high on The Greatest Showman, things are looking up a lot more for the flick than they were a few weeks ago when it opened in fourth place at the box office.
If you haven't caught The Greatest Showman, yet, you can currently catch it in wide release in theaters opposite aforementioned movies like The Last Jedi. In addition, you can take a look at all of the movies the musical is going to have to compete with as we head into 2018 with our full schedule.
