A Memorial Day weekend hangover is certainly in play as many holdover titles saw downcast fortunes and a number of smaller new arrivals had little impact at all.
The month of May was a choked one with numerous massive titles released and a marketplace resembling a steel cage match. The reality is that there could have been some schedule shifting going on for as no truly major releases were released and it was prime for the taking. The interest now will be in how much this will benefit the reboot “Oceans 8”, opening next Friday. Meanwhile here are the depleted numbers this week.
SOLO: A STAR WARS STORY -$29.29 Million
The real question here was going to be if positive word-of-mouth might float the title. It took a major drop in week two of -65%. This is not unusual following a Memorial Day open, however this is a Star Wars picture and it had a much lower than expected debut last week. After 10 days it still has not earned $150 million. It is looking like this was far too early for a new film from this universe to arrive, just 5 months after “Last Jedi”. It would have been wiser to go with a Christmas release to position this more like an event picture, and let some of that negative advance word die down. “Solo” is going to need a very impressive foreign box office total by this stage to come close to a profit.
2. DEADPOOL 2 – $23.32m
Faring much better with only a -46% drop this is shaping up to have been an interesting case of counter-programming. Fox originally was having this title debut this weekend, but they moved it ahead two weeks, The hope was it would make a splash (it did) and then benefit from the lengthy weekend, despite tough competition (it did okay). Considering the weakness of “Solo”, which few anticipated, the wonder is if DP2 opened this week would it have done any better with a clear weekend ahead of it? The next landmark title is “The Incredibles 2”, on June 15.
3. ADRIFT – $11.51
This smaller action-drama set on the high seas stars Shailene Woodley. It comes in slightly below projections for the indie distributer STX Films. It will have to linger for a few weeks and find an audience in order to see it getting into a profit.
4. AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR – $10.37m
Still sitting in 3,500 screens after 6 weeks, it is edging over the $650 million plateau. By Tuesday it should become only the fourth movie ever to cross $2 billion globally. The next thing to watch in the coming weeks is how it will do against the final “Black Panther” numbers. This week that title is a few hundred thousand dollars away from hitting $700 million domestically.
5. BOOK CLUB – $6.8m
This is turning into a tidy hit for Paramount. The adult female comedy is serving as a decent alternative to the comic book mayhem. It managed to add 350 screens and is about to go over $50 million so far.
6. UPGRADE – $4.45m
This debut from the BH Tilt action film division is doing slightly better than expected, which is all relative with Blumhouse productions. The small box office is against a miniscule budget and PR-distribution cost of less than $20 million. If they can linger just a bit there will be the expected profits.
7. LIFE OF THE PARTY – $3.45m
Following a disappointing open it has leveled off with a slightly better longer run, though this still has a long way to seeing profits.
8. BREAKING IN – $2.81m
Meanwhile in similar fashion this genre release was never expected to last this long and see numbers over $40 million. A clear win for New Line that positioned this for the secondary markets.
9. ACTION POINT – $2.31m
Here is a major bomb from Johnny Knoxville. While holding many of the same stunt-based gags this is not a true part of his Jackass franchise, and lacks his cast of masochistic goofballs. Paramount tried to dump this, and barely marketed the movie, giving it a 70s-style poster to highlight the gags that were not present on screen. Critics savaged this a wild bore of a film the audience was no more impressed — exit polls gave this a “C+” CInemaScore. This leads to it making about half of the already dismal projections for the weekend.
10. OVERBOARD – $1.97m
The remake has failed to arrive at the port of profitability and is now about to be cast adrift.
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