Hey guys! Welcome back to The Box Office Report! In this article I attempt to dive into the box office of the previous weekend and give a bit of commentary on what the heck actually happened! Can you believe that August is nearly gone? We have one more weekend of the month to contend with and, quite frankly, we can’t get through it nearly fast enough. It’s literally been a very poor month. So, let’s see how the weekend did!
I don’t think anyone was really surprised to see this movie open as the number one film. The Hitman’s Bodyguard is the latest film starring Ryan Reynolds and Samuel L. Jackson. It has shades of The Nice Guys which came out last year and bombed. The Hitman’s Bodyguard seems to be a bit more accepted as the $21.3M gross this weekend nearly matches its production budget of $30M. This is a buddy comedy and it looks hilarious. I think the film at least doubles its production budget which will be great as action comedies haven’t performed as well recently (Baywatch, CHiPS). The Hitman’s Bodyguard has mediocre to bad reviews (Rotten Tomatoes – 39%, CinemaScore – B+, Metacritic – 50) but I do believe this film will be essentially review proof as there’s just not much out in theaters that folks haven’t already seen. I expect the film to retain its number 1 place next week.
Logan Lucky looks fantastic on paper. A heist film with the likes of Channing Tatum and Adam Driver playing redneck brothers and others (Daniel Craig has a Southern accent!) trying to steal money from Charlotte Motor Speedway during a race What more could you ask for!? Well it seems that everyone either didn’t care for it or had no clue about it as I’ve seen some people wondering what this film is thanks to some poor marketing. The reviews for the film have been great for the most part (Rotten Tomatoes – 93%, CinemaScore – B, Metacritic – 78) yet the film opens squarely in third place. Steven Soderbergh, the director of the film, distributed the film through his own company, Fingerprint Releasing, and spent $20M on marketing. This means the film will need to make at least $50 to turn some kind of a profit. This doesn’t look good for the film and I’m scratching my head as to why it would release the film this weekend opposite of a similar film. These are both action comedies. Hopefully Logan Lucky has a good word of mouth and can pick up the slack next weekend or it’s going to be just another bust. Which is a shame because I’ve been looking forward to this one for a few months!
Rest of the Top Ten Quick Hits:
I had thought that Annabelle: Creation would eventually outpace the original Annabelle but that seems to not be the case anymore. The original Annabelle is currently $2.5M ahead of the pace of Annabelle: Creation (The film is still a massive success regardless). Dunkirk is holding quite nicely and is $23M away from Interstellar’s total ($188M). The Nut Job 2 even had a nice hold (39% is nothing to sneeze at) but only $5M? This film is still in over four thousand theaters! I’ve nothing nice to say about The Emoji Movie anymore but it’s surprisingly doing well. Could it hit $90M? Maybe. Spider-Man: Homecoming is still on track for $325M although it could potentially hit $330M. Girls Trip hit $100M before this weekend and that’s a pretty massive accomplishment for a film that no one really knew about. The Dark Tower is barely clinging to life at this point. If the film can get to $50M then I think it’ll be fine but only “break even” fine. Wind River, which opened last week, rounds out the top ten. This feels like a film that should have been Oscar-bait. A very indie film, it’ll be interesting to see if this film continues to gain any sort of traction moving forward.
Movies Out of The Top Ten That I Still Won’t Shut Up About:
Despicable Me 3 finally crossed over $250M! It may not make $260M, and it’s obvious that the franchise is getting worn out domestically, but it’s still a cash cow overseas. War for the Planet of the Apes made $2M and is sitting at $140.9M. Wonder Woman made $1M, probably for the last weekend, and now has made $404M. This makes Wonder Woman the highest grossing superhero origin film ever domestically! Spider-Man held the previous record at $403.7M. I originally thought Wonder Woman would finish with $405M but it’s looking like it’ll be closer to $407M. Still a fantastic run for this film.
2017 Domestic Totals:
No major changes this weekend. We now have 20 films that have grossed $100M or more this year. Can you name what the other ten films outside of the top ten are? I don’t think we’ll have another $100M+ film for a month or so.
Notable Box Office Closings
The Mummy (2017)
Opened: June 9th, Closed: August 17th
$80M domestic, $405M worldwide vs $125M budget
It seems that Tom Cruise can’t save a film that is just bad from the get-go. I think it’s fair to say that this film had everything going against it. Brendan Fraser’s The Mummy films, at least the first two, are held in such a high regard that even though they are over a decade old they still out class this version. I still think the Dark Universe is still game on from Universal but the budget is going to have to be trimmed extensively and the scripts are going to have to be really tight. This film should have been a darker take on the subject matter but it just unraveled in the end.
2017 Worldwide Totals:
Wonder Woman has also finally made $800M worldwide! I never thought this film would make more than Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice ($873M) but it’s going to be really close in the long run. If the release of Wonder Woman in Japan goes well it could be less than $50M away from BvS’s worldwide total which is phenomenal when you think about it. Wonder Woman is the fourth highest grossing DC Comics film of all time (The Dark Knight Rises, The Dark Knight, and BvS are one through three). Spider-Man: Homecoming may very well pass Guardians of the Galaxy ($773M) with its upcoming release in markets like China. $800M would be great for the film. Wolf Warrior 2 has passed Spider-Man: Homecoming, though, and is currently in seventh place. It made nearly $100M in the past week which is insane! Could this film be the next $1B film this year? If it continues its pace then it very well could be. It’ll be fun to watch!
That does it for this week! Next weekend looks to be very light with the new releases as the Bruce Lee biopic, Birth of the Dragon, and the indie animated film from the Weinstein Company, Leap, releases. I truthfully don’t see either of these films going crazy on the box office so it’ll be interesting to see where the current releases stack compared to these new ones! So as always, thanks for reading and thanks for the support!
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