U.S. Box Office Walloped Wednesday With 5,000 Theaters Dark, Though Drive-Ins Have Some Gas

Anthony D'Alessandro

March 20, 2020 at 11:41 AM·4 min read

Just to give you an idea of how bad things are right now at the box office…

While yesterday reached the lowest we’ve seen at the domestic B.O. with $260K for all titles, it’s not a historical low yet because we haven’t seen how horrible today is yet.

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Yesterday was -98% from the third Wednesday in March a year ago when all titles (led by Disney’s Captain Marvel) made $10.6M and -97% from last Wednesday’s total B.O. of $7.69M per Comscore.

Currently, there’s between 450-500 theaters open with over 4,9K closed. The hardest markets hit include Canada (614 closed), the Midwest (362), Pacific Northwest (276), Greater New York (270), Southern Plains (257), Mid-Atlantic (250), Southern California (247), and Florida (244). The total number of theaters dark in the U.S./Canada equates to a 96% box office loss according to industry reports.

As theaters began to move off line earlier this week, accelerated by New York and Los Angeles, you can see in the chart below how the weekend’s top 10 pics saw their daily grosses drop precipitously.

So who the heck is still open?

If you look at a map, you’ll see locations in the flyover states, and mostly throughout the East, specifically Florida up into the mid-Atlantic states.

Who did the biggest business yesterday (which unfortunately wasn’t really that big)?

Largely drive-in theaters when juxtaposed to regular theaters. Currently, as long as local ordinances allow them to remain open, they’re the best place for moviegoers to enjoy the show while practicing social distancing. But there won’t be any new product for them for at least two months, and there’s only 305 drive-ins stateside. Among those drive-ins that clocked cash were the Paramount Drive-In in Paramount, CA ($1,183), the Sacramento 6 Drive-in ($1,039), the Van Buren in Riverside, CA ($916), the Silver Moon Twin in Lakeland, Fl ($742), the Ruskin Family Drive-in in Ruskin, Fl ($739), the Vineland in Industry, CA ($654), and the Joy-Lan in Dade City, Fl ($400K) among others. Other theaters which showed signs of life included the Premiere Cinemas Imax in Lubbock, TX ($1,195), Fatcats Recline & Dine in Gilbert, AZ ($612), the Roadhouse Cinema Scottsdale, AZ ($534) and the B&B Wentzville Tower in Missouri ($677) to name a few.

Note as of Wednesday, Sony/Blumhouse’s Fantasy Island is technically the 10th highest grossing title for Wednesday with over $5K, but we kept Emma in given it’s top 10 rank from last weekend.

rank	pic	dis	3/13-15 (%)	mon (% chg vs. sun)	tues (% chg. vs. mon)	wed (% chg v. tues)	tl	wk
1	Onward	Dis	$10.6M (-73%)	$753K (-72%)	$348K (-54%)	$61,5K (-82%)	$61.5M	2
2	I Still Believe	LG	$9.1M	$475K (-76%)	$234K (-51%)	$38,6K (-83%)	$9.9M	1
3	Bloodshot	Sony	$9.176M	$552,6K (-74%)	$191K (-65%)	$36,1K (-84%)	$10M	1
4	Invisible Man	Uni/Blum	$5.89M (-61%)	$410K (-73%)	$140K (-66%)	$32,8K (-76%)	$64.8M	3
5	The Hunt	Uni/Blum	$5.3M	$357K (-71%)	$116K (-68%)	$24,3K (-79%)	$5.8M	1
6	The Call of the Wild	Dis/20th	$2.2M (-67%)	$148,9K (-73%)	$70K (-53%)	$17,2K (-75%)	$62.3M	4
7	Sonic	Par	$2.5M (-67%)	$202K (-70%)	$81,5K (-60%)	$16,3K (-81%)	$146.1M	5
8	the Way Back	WB	$2.36M (-71%)	$143,9K (-76%)	$55K (-62%)	$7,3K (-87%)	$13.5M	2
9	Bad Boys for Life	Sony	$1.1M (-64%)	$91K (-70%)	$25K (-71%)	$6,4K (-75%)	$204.4M	9
10	Emma	Focus	$1.3M (-73%)	$88,6K (-70%)	$33,5K (-62%)	$2,7K (-92%)	$10M	4