Other opening updates:

UA/Orion’s Child’s Play grossed $6.1M yesterday with a $15.1M opening, which is proof that the genre can still be relied upon as counter-programming in the current marketplace. The shared experience in the theater is more crucial then ever now in the current millennial social media environment where split decisions are made on the fly when headed to the theater. If you’re not a ‘shared experience’ type of film, then you’re dead at the B.O., which is why we see a number of comedies not working right now. Horror still works on the big screen given its shared experience vibe. We hear this reboot which stars Aubrey Plaza and a voiceover by Mark Hamill was more expensive than Blumhouse’s Ma ($13.5M to $5M before P&A, UA says $10M), but still inexpensive enough. C+ CinemaScore which is average for a horror movie. PostTrak demos show Males over 25 at 31% out in force, followed by females under 25 (24%), then females over 25 (23%) and guys under 25 (22%). The 13-17 set making their way in the movie (around 10%) loved the pic the most at 72% positive. Overall, crowd was 53% Male and 75% between 18-34 years old. Diversity breakdown was 42% Caucasian, 25% Hispanic, 21% African American, and 12% Asian. The reboot played best in the West, East, & South-East, and South-West where it accounted for close to 81% of business versus other films in those four regions which did about 76% of their tickets sales.

As we mentioned yesterday, once people buy a ticket and watch Luc Besson’s Anna, they enjoy it and we’re seeing that in the exits with a B+ CinemaScore. However, we hear the digital P&A spend here was less than regular Lionsgate meat-and-potato action movies. Hence, the $1.3M business last and $3.4M opening. This is less than the low double digits put up by any Lionsgate/CanalPlus Liam Neeson movie and lower than the $7.4M opening posted by Jason Statham’s tried Mechanic: Resurrection. Given Besson being swept up in the #MeToo era after rape allegations brought against him by several women, Anna arrives in the states with much taint. That story is well on the critics’ mind as they slammed Anna with a 26% rating, but not on the general moviegoer’s. How is that? Well, Anna does look too indie and too similar to other shoot’ em ups to average moviegoers. Why then should they go? It’s a different story when Marvel Black Widow’s Scarlett Johansson stars in the film, and you have Universal’s P&A spend and a hot date like the end of July without any big competition, read Besson’s shoot ’em up Lucyfive years ago which opened to $43.9M and legged out $126.7M.