What the ‘Ticket to Paradise’ box office opening says about the state of the rom-com
For a series that opened four weeks after Super Bowl Sunday, “Ticket to Paradise” was a quiet start at the box office this weekend.
It opened with $1.1 million and grossed only $3.3 million on the weekend, with ancillaries such as Saturday matinee shows at 3, 4 and 5 and Sunday afternoon 4:30 shows doing to the domestic R-rated movie what a good movie doesn’t: a big crowd-pleaser. The weekend gross was about $2 million less than the first weekend of “R.I.P.D.,” which opened on the same day at the same time last year as the first “Ticket” opened on Super Bowl Sunday, and which ended with $9.1 million.
“This is a weekend to be remembered if you have an independent movie,” said Paul Dergarabedian, a box-office analyst and historian at Exhibitor Relations. Dergarabedian also studied the box-office performance of “Ticket” for “R.I.P.D.”
It looks like a good summer weekend for independent movies. Two were at or near the top of the Top 10 at the box office: “Joker” ($15.4 million opening weekend) and “Moms” ($19.4 million). That makes three summer openings for top-10 movies, compared to two in January and February last year, when “R.I.P.D.” and “The Dark Knight Rises” opened.
“R.I.P.D.” has grossed $82 million, while “Ticket” has grossed $52 million, and “R.I.P.D.” is on track to gross more than $90 million. So the “Ticket” opening this weekend was clearly better than last year’s “R.I.P.D.”