The man who practically invented the modern blockbuster, Steven Spielberg, returned to the genre with last weekend's Ready Player One. The entertaining spectacle debuted with a solid, if unremarkable $53.2 million over the 4-day Easter frame. With no real blockbusters until next weekend's Rampage, you might think that Ready Player One could cruise to another victory this weekend, but it's actually looking like Parzival and Co. may have to settle for second place to Jon Krasinski's horror film, A Quiet Place.
Entering the weekend with serious buzz and near-universal critical acclaim, A Quiet Place is poised to make some noise at the box office and take the top spot with a mid-$20 million debut, recouping its budget of $17 million. The horror renaissance continues, and while A Quiet Place won't hit the numbers of a name property like IT, the film is skewing younger and benefits from a PG-13 rating. Ready Player One is predicted to take second place on the leaderboard with somewhere in the low-$20 million range for its second weekend, according to Deadline. Rounding out the top three will probably be the R-rated comedy Blockers. The film, starring Leslie Mann and John Cena has earned positive reviews for a raunch comedy and is expected to land somewhere in the mid-teens or even up to $20 million this weekend.
Falling out of first is certainly not ideal for Ready Player One; however, it sounds like it will be a reasonably tight race and the drop could certainly be worse. Ready Player One has a long way to go to become profitable, possibly needing to make somewhere in the neighborhood of $420 to $500 million overall. Fortunately, the film is doing really well overseas, earning $128 million in its first weekend and it is playing especially well in China, taking in $61.7 million last weekend. Blockbusters like Ready Player One play especially well overseas, so the celebration of pop culture may have even longer legs with foreign audiences than domestic ones. The film has received what I would argue is some bad reviews, but audiences still seem to like it for the most part, as it has earned an A- CinemaScore. I would argue Steven Spielberg's latest is a blast, full of crowd-pleasing moments that deserve to be seen on the big screen.
Ultimately, this is a really great weekend for film fans whatever you see. You've got a new horror classic in A Quiet Place, a ridiculously funny adult comedy in Blockers and something that should never be ignored, a new Steven Spielberg film in Ready Player One. Plus, if you're in the right market, you can even check out Wes Anderson's stop-motion charmer, Isle of Dogs. Not even counting movies that have been out for a bit longer, that's a really fun, well-reviewed lineup that caters to whatever your cinematic tastes happen to be. No matter the order of the box office, film fans win. To see what the rest of the year holds for movie fans, check out our 2018 release schedule.
