Box Office 4/10 - 4/13: What’s with Marvel Heroes and Animated Birdy?

Malaysian movie-goers are predictable. You can always guess what movies will be a hit, and what will not. Jackie Chan, guaranteed a hit; very muscular action flicks, never failed; mainstream animated films, always a good bet; horror movies, modest success; drama films with lots of dialogues, not a favorite; rom-com chick flicks, no big crowd.

After a two-week domination at the box office, Captain America: The Winter Soldier stepped down to the second spot, beaten by the new release of the week: Rio 2. While Steve Rogers held off blue birdy in North America box office showdown, I expected the reverse outcome would happen in Malaysia. Captain America has been in cinema for two weeks here in Malaysia, and a high profile sequel to a hit from 2011 that spent two weeks on top of the box office chart is bound to push it down. The original Rio opened with MYR 1.68 mil weekend gross, and ultimately earned MYR 5.1 mil when it finished its run. This time around, Rio 2 opened with an even bigger MYR 2.55 mil, proves that mainstream animated films always have market here in Malaysia, and that market is expanding if you already established your brand through the first outing.

It’s interesting that last year both Iron 3 and Thor: The Dark World spent three weeks at the top of the chart, so Captain America would be the weaker link among The Avengers, right? Not quite. Hulk has yet to prove himself so we’ll never know. And this second movie in Captain America franchise has collected MYR 24.5 mil so far, so much higher than the MYR 8.6 mil of the first one after three weeks in cinema, so... scrap that weaker link comment. Another interesting trivia: On the third week of Thor: The Dark World’s reign, there was a new animated film Free Birds released, and Thor won that round. So twice have the Marvel superheroes go against animated birds, and the results so far is a draw.

As it happens, we have two slightly different charts for our local box office performance. The first is the US based Box Office Mojo, where they also report the gross in both USD and MYR (though the source is unknown), the other is the local cinema.com.my, where it's only a plain chart without gross.

So which one is the correct one you may ask? I don't have a straight answer for that, I think both are useful in their own way. For the actual ranking I will believe in the second chart, as you can see it includes more regional films like the newly opened Hong Kong movie Delete My Love and two Tamil films. It is possible that a US based website missed out these three entries. However, when it comes to the gross number, I believe the one published on Box Office Mojo are still reliable, especially the top English movies. So let's consolidate the two charts in our discussion.

Elsewhere in the chart, two other new releases were horror pics, Oculus and 3AM Part 2, and both received mild success (considering the budget). Oculus opened at no. 3 (same position as in the North America chart, so we have the identical Top 3 just in different sorting), while Thai movie 3AM Part 2 at no. 8. Also opened last week was Delete My Love, a comedy starring Wong Cho Lam. It placed at no. 5, and together with the no. 7 movie Black Comedy, proves that Wong Cho Lam has his market among Chinese audience.

Failed to place themselves in the chart were two new releases Draft Day and The Grand Budapest Hotel (according to Box Office Mojo they were ranked 10th and 11th respectively, which could mean they were actually 13th and 14th if we include the three films BOM missed out). This is expected, as American football is not a popular sport here in Malaysia, and Wes Anderson is also not a family name (The Grand Budapest Hotel had limited release only). Too bad, both were good movies, better than Arnold’s Sabotage anyway. Sabotage is currently at no. 4 after two weeks in cinema. But action flick never failed to deliver here in Malaysia, what can you do?