Home Entertainment Local weekend box office – Captain Marvel rockets to the top

Local weekend box office – Captain Marvel rockets to the top

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When Wonder Woman released back in 2017, the DCEU’s first female-fronted film blew up the box office everywhere. Everywhere except here. Whether it was due to a lack of material familiarity or the film’s almost non-existent promotional campaign locally, Wonder Woman’s South African debut saw it have to fight tooth and nail with Baywatch (yes, that Baywatch) just to manage a very soft R4 million opening. Now it’s the time of Captain Marvel, which faces the same potential stumbling blocks in the SA market. However, history is most definitely not repeating itself as the Brie Larson-led Marvel superhero film has flown higher, further faster!

Captain Marvel opened in SA this weekend past to the fantastic tune of R11.1 million. That’s an incredibly impressive opening. To put it in perspective: Going all the way back to the beginning of 2018, only Black Panther (R16.8 million) and Avengers: Infinity War (R25.2 million) have posted bigger debuts, with Aquaman (R10.1 million) nipping at Captain Marvel’s heels. Clearly, local audiences are far from suffering from superhero fatigue which means we can probably expect Avengers: Endgame to make a rather large mountain of Randelas when it releases at the end of next month.

There was one other newcomer this past Friday, but its fortunes were the exact opposite of Captain Marvel’s as White Boy Rick got a very limited opening (only 6 screens) and found itself all the way down in 15th position. Sandwiched in between them, the rest of the chart mostly just dropped down one spot as everything held over pretty well. Well, nearly everything as Alita: Battle Angel was the biggest faller on charts, dropping down 68% as it lost nearly half is cinema screens to Captain Marvel.

Let’s see what the rest of the South African box office chart looks like:

No.Movie Name Weekend gross Percentage change Local gross Last Week's Position
1Captain Marvel R11.1 million NE R11.1 million NE
2What Men Want R2 million -31% R12.4 million 1st
3How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World R1.3 million -22% R20.4 million 2nd
4A Madea Funeral R1.2 million -30% R3.5 million 3RD
5The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part R1 million -31% R2.6 million 4TH
6The Upside R577 059 -23% R8.9 million 6th
7Green Book R344 286 -22% R2.3 million 8th
8Alita: Battle Angel R307 250 -68% R6.3 million 5th
9Bohemian Rhapsody R258 099 -32% R42.3 million 9th
10Little Italy R226 448 -62% R992 111 7th

NE = New Entry

Last Updated: March 13, 2019

4 Comments

  1. Well, Wonder Woman also came after some less than stellar DC movies, so perhaps people were sceptical of it at first? Captain Marvel is part of a tried and tested MCU, plus Endgame is coming soon. So I feel that the deck is stacked against WW in this comparison. Enjoyed both movies myself on opening weekend, though WW is in my opinion better 🙂

    Reply

    • Guz

      March 13, 2019 at 15:57

      WW>CM but saying that this movie was actually quite nice, nothing to shout off roof tops about but still good

      Reply

  2. Guz

    March 13, 2019 at 15:57

    I just watched it today, I was a bit skeptical, but didnt want to miss anything for END GAME but after watching it found that I quite enjoyed it. The worry about a feminist agenda were unfounded.
    There were some “girl power” moments but they were relevant to the story,

    Also goose xD

    Reply

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