Welcome to The Box Office Report! This past weekend was one of the worst in the history of the box office as severe weather and a high profile boxing match coupled with an abysmal pair of new releases left a lot to be desired. To anyone who has been affected by what was Hurricane Harvey you are in my thoughts and prayers. I’ve seen pictures of the flooding in and around Houston and it is absolutely heartbreaking. I hope for everyone in Houston and the surrounding areas a speedy recovery! Now, let’s get on to the movies!
I’ve seen that the budget for Leap! is somewhere around $30M. If that’s the case then this movie went down in flames. Although CinemaScore gave the film an A, Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic weren’t as cheery giving the film a 38% and a 49 respectively. The Weinstein Company is a mini-major film studio, not quite an indie company, that has actually had a few successes in recent years. Django Unchained ($425M worldwide), The King’s Speech ($414M worldwide), Silver Linings Playbook ($236M), Inglourious Basterds ($321M worldwide) and The Imitation Game ($233M worldwide) are some of their most successful films to date. The issue I’m seeing with this company is that they tend to do extremely well with dramas and they like working with Quentin Tarantino. The one thing they tend to fail at is animation. Their highest grossing animated film is Hoodwinked which opened with $12M and finished with $51M domestic and $110M worldwide versus a budget of $15M. That’s actually a really solid return. I don’t think Leap! even sniffs that much money with the opening that it had. Everyone is either back in school or gone back to work and there just isn’t a crowd of kids to take to see this film. Leap! should, unfortunately, get buried within the next few weeks.
How many of you expected a film called Birth of the Dragon to be a biopic about Bruce Lee? Now, how many of you would have gone and seen this film if it had been a true biopic about Bruce Lee? As one of the most iconic martial artists in the world I think it would have been fantastic to have a modern telling of how Bruce Lee came to be in the world. I imagine something similar to the fantastic foreign Ip Man films which tell true stories but also feature some fantastic fight scenes. It seems that the general audience wasn’t quite as impressed with the film. Birth of the Dragon will be remembered as a failed attempt at telling part of the story of Bruce Lee, if this film is remembered at all.
Rest of the Top Ten Quick Hits:
The Hitman’s Bodyguard continued its run as it took number one for the second week in a row. I expect this film to be number one next weekend as well. Either way, next weekend is shaping up to be even worse than this past weekend. It won’t be a runaway success but it’s some nice coin in the pocket for Lionsgate. Annabelle: Creation is now looking to outpace the original Annabelle. I keep telling you guys I’m terrible at predictions. Wind River continues adding theaters and will be the most successful of the two Weinstein Company films out right now. Logan Lucky just isn’t really lucky right now. This makes me sad. Dunkirk is holding quite nicely. I still think it’ll pass Interstellar. Spider-Man: Homecoming is holding like a champ. $330M may be a lock at this point. The Mayweather vs McGregor fight is in the top ten? What the heck? Seems that some theaters showed the fight on the big screen and folks were happy to oblige. That’s crazy. The Emoji Movie is still in the top ten. Somebody end this madness!
Movies Out of The Top Ten That I Still Won’t Shut Up About:
Despicable Me 3, Baby Driver, and Wonder Woman all added theaters this weekend in an attempt to take advantage of a disappointing weekend. Despicable Me 3 added 565 theaters yet still dropped 15.6% pulling in $1.7M. Baby Driver added 1,074 theaters gaining 41% more this weekend than last weekend, $1.2M. Wonder Woman added 1,407 theaters, a handful of them IMAX theaters, and gained 53% more than last weekend with $1.6M. I wonder if more studios will do this with other films this weekend. It’ll be a desperate attempt to try and bolster what some have predicted as a historically poor weekend.
2017 Domestic Totals:
Wonder Woman is trying to make a push to pass by a few of Marvel’s top domestic films. It currently has its eyes set on passing Captain America: Civil War ($408M) and Iron Man 3 ($409M). I believe this film could honestly close with $410+M domestically thanks to WB adding additional theaters for a final push. If Wonder Woman ends up passing those two films it will be the fifth highest grossing comic book adaptation of all time domestically (Marvel’s The Avengers, The Dark Knight, Avengers: Age of Ultron, and The Dark Knight Rises are one through four so this would be extremely impressive). Dunkirk is on the edge of joining the top ten and it should be there by the time you read next week’s report. It currently is in eleventh with $172M.
Notable Movie Closings:
Transformers: The Last Knight
Opened: June 21st, Closed: August 24th
$130.1M domestic, $603.9M worldwide vs $217M budget
It’s finally over. The Michael Bay era of Transformers films ended with more of a whimper than a real bang as The Last Knight made less money than any of the current series of Transformers films. No one is really surprised by that domestic total but I honestly believe the foreign totals may have saved the franchise as a whole. I think Paramount may have to go back to the drawing board, trim the budgets a good bit, but I think they could still make a decent amount of cash from the series. Not to mention the toys these things probably sell. I can’t see myself rooting for a new Transformers film but I hope this gives Paramount the wake-up call that it needs to see that the entire franchise needs re-tooling.
2017 Worldwide:
Despicable Me 3 is still on pace to make over $1B which is an incredible feat. I’ve underestimated how popular this film series is overseas. Wonder Woman finally opened in Japan to the tune of $3.4M. I don’t see Japan breaking down the doors of its theaters to see the film but I still think Wonder Woman finished between $820M and $830M worldwide now. The craze that was Wolf Warrior 2 has slowed down tremendously. It was still a nice run! Dunkirk, not in the top ten, reached a milestone as it passed $400M worldwide. Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, which I never thought I’d talk about again, finally opened in China with $28M. I don’t think China could save the film at this point but at least it’ll soften the loss a bit. The film currently has grossed $172.6 worldwide against a budget of $177.2.
That’ll do it for this week’s The Box Office Report! Next week we have literally nothing releasing in anything more than 700 theaters, which is a Close Encounters of The Third Kind re-release! Next week is also Labor Day weekend so I hope everyone enjoys their Monday off, if you get it off! Just how low can we go with next weekend’s box office? Tune in next week and find out! So as always, thanks for reading and thanks for the support!
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