The Bottom Line: March 6, 2020: Pixar’s ONWARD Will Soar into the Box Office Stratosphere

The Bottom Line: March 6, 2020

Just a few weeks ago it was a little blue furry hedgehog that soared to the top box office spot. This weekend, it’s two elf brothers in Pixar’s Onward that will help to pull in a very strong opening weekend, despite all the health panic in the world right now.

Pixar’s latest magical movie is set for a $40 million to $50 million opening and given the chaos going on in the world right now, anything better than that is, well a good thing. But will it knock off The Invisible Man ($33,738,175) from that number one spot? It’s Pixar, so I’d put my money on it. Let’s take a closer look at this week’s Top Five as well as Onward, and Ben Affleck’s newest flick The Way Back.

Box Office Top Five

Rounding out the top five under The Invisible Man is The Call of the Wild ($48,601,764), Sonic the Hedgehog ($131,941,855), My Hero Academia: Heroes: Rising ($10,361,847) and Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey ($80,077,223). With only two movies opening this weekend, the top 10 won’t change much, except that Onward will place on top and The Way Back should place somewhere in the mid to lower part of the box office.

A Closer Look at Some of This Week’s Films

Onward (PG) 109 minutes: Raise your hand if the premise of Pixar’s newest, and not a sequel, animated movie seemed a little odd to you at first. The concept is that two teenage elf brothers, Ian and Barley Lightfoot, find out they were left a wizard staff from their father who died before one of them was born and too early for the other to truly remember him. (Bring tissues.) The staff comes with a spell that allows the sons to bring back dad for 24 hours (bring more tissues). But something goes wrong and just dad’s legs appear and the brothers only have 24 days to bring back the rest of the father (just bring the whole box of tissues). Early whisperings about the movie say that Pixar is at its best and I’ve gone from not wanting to sit through this to running to see it this weekend. It looks like an absolute delight — tissues and all.

The Way Back (R) 108 minutes: Let the sports quips begin. Does Ben Affleck shoot and score in his latest role as a former basketball player who now struggles with alcoholism and is offered a coaching job at his alma mater. He plays Jack Cunningham and delivers a slam dunk in his performance as the coach who tries to pull a team together that hasn’t won a championship since Cunningham went to the school. The movie hit close to home for the actor, who had his own 40-day stint in rehab during the movie’s filming.

The Bottom Line

Thanks to the coronavirus and everyone talking about staying home, who knows how it will affect the box office bottom line. It might shake up the numbers this weekend, or hopefully, everyone will go about their fun this weekend and see a good flick. It will be interesting to look at the numbers on Monday.  Coming up next weekend is I Still Believe (which feels like it’s been marketed for a year) (March 13) Bloodshot (March 13), My Spy (March 13), and The Hunt (March 13).

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