‘Unplanned’ Movie Shocks Hollywood with Top 5 Box Office Finish
Hollywood has another indie hit, even if it doesn’t want to admit it.
Unplanned, the true story of a former director of a Planned Parenthood clinic, opened this past weekend on a modest 1,059 screens. That’s less than a third of the number of screens wide-release films get for their opening weekend. Regardless, Unplanned exceeded industry estimates to finish #4 among the top ten films for the weekend.
Unplanned earned nearly $6.4 million over the weekend, finishing behind Disney’s Dumbo, Jordan Peele’s Us, and the superhero smash Captain Marvel. It averaged more than $6,000 in ticket sales per screen for the weekend, performing better than Captain Marvel.
The film succeeded despite what some describe as a censorship attempt on social media. Twitter actually shut down the film’s official account over the weekend, and after some protests, it was reinstated, but missing hundreds of thousands of followers.
Twitter claims the account suspension was a mistake, but some claim the social media giant was trying to undermine the film for its pro-life message. Hollywood itself didn’t give the film much buzz or credit, but that didn’t stop moviegoers from buying tickets.
The film tells the story of Abby Johnson, a former Planned Parenthood clinic director who quit her job and joined the pro-life movement after seeing the process and effects of abortion first-hand. The film has been blasted as “anti-abortion propaganda” by critics, and some networks refused to air commercials promoting the film.
The Trailer
In the midst of its opening weekend, Twitter suspended the account and erased thousands of followers. It is suspected that a campaign of mass reporting (in which a large number of people report an account to Twitter for violating the rules, causing an automatic suspension) was behind the shut down.
The account was eventually restored, and the campaign backfired, as publicity surrounding the suspension caused a wave of new followers. The Twitter account now has over 330,000 followers, and even surpassed the official Planned Parenthood Twitter account in total followers.
Here are the top ten films for the past weekend.
1 Dumbo (2019), $45,990,748
2 Us, $33,229,640
3 Captain Marvel, $20,664,264
4 Unplanned, $6,382,298
5 Five Feet Apart, $6,197,557
6 Wonder Park, $5,011,027
7 How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World, $4,371,920
8 Hotel Mumbai, $3,196,209
9 Tyler Perry’s A Madea Family Funeral, $2,677,413
10 The Beach Bum, $1,763,070
The movie even out-earned the only other new film opening over the weekend: Matthew McConaughey’s new flick The Beach Bum.
Unplanned is currently playing in theaters across America.
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