Moviefone Editorial

Tag: weekend-box-office

  • Weekend Box Office: ‘Jason Bourne’ Explodes to No. 1, ‘Bad Moms’ Surprises

    By Brent Lang

    LOS ANGELES, July 31 (Variety.com) – Audiences turned out in force to see Matt Damon in “Jason Bourne,” pushing the spy sequel to a sterling $60 million debut.

    The film marked the actor’s return to the action franchise after a nine-year hiatus, during which he repeatedly hinted that he might be done with his most popular role. He and director Paul Greengrass argued that 2007’s “The Bourne Ultimatum” had brought the character full circle by filling in him on the shadowy bureaucratic maneuvers that transformed him into a killing machine. What was left?

    Be it creative spark or big paydays, the pair were somehow lured back to the series. That’s good news for Universal, which ran the risk of losing a Tiffany franchise without Damon’s involvement. In the interim, the studio had made an ill-conceived attempt at cinematic universe building with “The Bourne Legacy,” introducing Jeremy Renner as another amnesic ass-kicker dubbed Aaron Cross. The crowds didn’t exactly flock to see this sub-Bourne, and the film grossed about $150 million less than “The Bourne Ultimatum” globally.

    As a sign of Damon’s appeal, audience surveys reveal that the actor’s presence above-the-title was the second most frequently cited reason that people turned up for “Jason Bourne.”

    “It’s no secret that people were anticipating a reunion of [Damon and Greengrass],” said Nick Carpou, Universal’s domestic distribution chief, adding “Putting the team back together made smart business sense.”

    “Jason Bourne” marks the series’ second highest opening, behind “The Bourne Ultimatum’s” $69.3 million debut. When adjusted for inflation, however, it trails all but “The Bourne Legacy’s” opening weekends. Universal spent $120 million to make the latest installment and released it in 4,026 theaters.

    “It proves that this is a franchise that’s still viable and that it can continue if they want to keep making them,” said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst at ComScore. “‘Jason Bourne’ is the perfect title for this film, because that’s who everyone wanted to see return.”

    Aaron Cross…not so much.

    Even with Bourne’s resurgence commanding most of the attention, the weekend’s other major new wide release managed to score a respectable debut. STX Entertainment’s “Bad Moms” opened to a healthy $23.4 million and a third place finish. That’s a strong return on the film’s $20 million production budget. It also gives STX Entertainment a much needed win after its other summer release, the Civil War drama “Free State of Jones” collapsed at multiplexes.

    “Bad Moms” originally was set up at Paramount Pictures and was intended to star Leslie Mann with the actress’ husband and frequent collaborator Judd Apatow producing. But Mann dropped out, as did Apatow, and the project migrated to STX. It stars Mila Kunis, Kristen Bell, and Kathryn Hahn as women who reject the pressure to be perfect parents, and instead indulge in hard partying and a more relaxed, Chablis-fueled approach to child-rearing.

    “It is a terrific movie that has a lot of heart and a lot of laughs and it plays great across the board,” said Kevin Grayson, STX’s domestic distribution chief.

    Grayson believes the film will continue to draw crowds in the coming weeks, because there are no other raunchy comedies with female leads on deck. That could help the picture withstand “Suicide Squad‘s” opening next weekend. The comic book movie is tracking to open to as much as $125 million, establishing a new record for an August launch.

    STX is the brainchild of Robert Simonds, the producer of “Cheaper by the Dozen” and “The Pink Panther” films. Armed with backing from the likes of TPG, Hony Capital and Huayi Brothers, the studio has ambitions to spend as much as $1.1 billion annually on producing, marketing and self-distributing its films by 2017. So far, its early efforts have been mixed. It scored with low-budget horror films such as “The Gift” and “The Boy,” but lost money on the thriller “The Secret in Their Eyes” and the point-of-view action film “Hardcore Henry.”

    Among newcomers, Lionsgate fielded “Nerve,” a $20 million thriller about a digital truth or dare-style game that takes a deadly turn. The film stars Dave Franco and Emma Roberts. It opened Wednesday in order to get a jumpstart on the competition, earning $15 million over its first five days and $9 million over the weekend.

    “We felt the best approach was to let the movie do the heavy lifting and let word of mouth carry it,” said David Spitz, co-president of domestic theatrical distribution at Lionsgate. “If you read all the comments whether it’s on Instagram or Facebook or Twitter, the response is amazing. The audience loves the film. “

    In holdover news, Paramount’s “Star Trek Beyond” slipped roughly 60% in its second weekend to gross $24 million and nab second place. That brings the sci-fi sequel’s domestic haul to $105.7 million. With a hefty $185 million budget, the film needs to resonate overseas if it wants to make a profit, because, as it stands, that kind of a result doesn’t justify sequels or guarantee profits.

    Illumination and Universal’s “The Secret Life of Pets” continues to be one of the biggest hits of the summer. The animated offering took fourth place with $18.2 million. The look at what pets do when their owners are at work has earned $296.2 million and seems destined to inspire more installments in the furry friend saga. After shattering records in 2015, Universal got off to a more modest start this year, with films like “The Huntsman: Winter’s War” and “Warcraft” failing to catch fire. However, the studio has bounced back in recent weeks, revived by the success of “The Secret Life of Pets” and “Jason Bourne.”

    “Lights Out,” a horror film from New Line, rounded out the top five, picking up $10.8 million to bring its total to $42.8 million after two weeks.

    On the art house front, Summit and Roadside Attractions opened “Indignation to $89,072, for a $22,268 per-screen average. The drama about a precocious college student who clashes with the conservative head of his college marks the directorial debut of former Focus chief James Schamus.

    This summer has been a mixed bag from a box office perspective. The industry has been in a funk as high-profile films such as “Alice Through the Looking Glass,” “The Legend of Tarzan,” and “The BFG” have flopped. However, this weekend’s receipts are an improvement on the year ago period when “Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation” led the box office. Sales are up roughly 30% thanks to the one-two punch of “Jason Bourne” and “Bad Moms.”

    “We’re starting to chip away at the summer deficit,” said Dergarabedian. “Maybe with ‘Suicide Squad’ opening, we’ll see the end to all this volatility.”

  • Box Office: ‘Ghostbusters’ Trails ‘Secret Life of Pets’ With $46.5M Weekend

    ghostbusters box officeBy Dave McNary

    LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – The rebooted “Ghostbusters” is launching with a respectable $46.5 million opening weekend at 3,963 locations, trailing “The Secret Life of Pets” for the top spot at the U.S. box office, Saturday estimates showed.

    Illumination-Universal’s hit “The Secret Life of Pets” should win the weekend with $50 million at 4,381 sites, declining only 52% from its opening. The animated comedy’s 10-day total will hit $202 million by the end of Sunday.

    Sony-Village Roadshow’s “Ghostbusters,” starring Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, Kate McKinnon and Leslie Jones, is on its way to posting the best debut weekend for a live-action comedy since “Pitch Perfect 2” opened with $69 million last year. Sony’s recent estimates had been in the $38 million to $40 million range while rivals had forecasted correctly that it would take in between $45 million and $50 million.

    “Ghostbusters” topped “Pets” on its opening day on Friday with $17.2 million, while “Pets” took in $15 million on its eighth day. “Pets” should more than make up the difference on Saturday and Sunday.

    “Ghostbusters” received a decent B+ Cinemascore from its audience with under 25 moviegoers giving the film an A-. Sony noted that it represented the biggest live-action opening since Fox’s “X-Men: Apocalypse” two months ago and the second-highest live-action non-superhero film of the year behind Disney’s “The Jungle Book.”

    “Ghostbusters” also has to overcome the perception — particularly among male fans — that it would not measure up to the 1984 original. That film, starring Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray, Harold Ramis and Ernie Hudson, was a smash hit with a massive $229 million domestic total.

    First tracking last month had shown that the opening weekend for the new “Ghostbusters” could be well under $40 million but a massive marketing campaign and solid reviews gave it some needed momentum. The film has a current 73% Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

    It’s also facing a tricky road to being profitable, given its hefty $144 million price tag. “Ghostbusters” will need to maintain solid performance in the coming weeks to be profitable — and generate significant grosses overseas. “Ghostbusters” opens internationally in the English language territories of the U.K. and Australia as well as Brazil and a handful of other smaller markets.

    As with the original, the movie is set in Manhattan being beset by an invasion of ghosts. Ivan Reitman, who directed the original film, produced with Amy Pascal.

  • ​How ‘Conjuring 2’ and ‘Now You See Me 2’ Bucked the Box Office’s Sequel Fatigue

    The Conjuring 2 and Now You See Me 2 box office2016 has been a disappointing year for sequels at the box office, from “Zoolander 2” to last week’s “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows.” With two more of them out this weekend — “The Conjuring 2” and “Now You See Me 2” — there was a lot of talk that both movies would tank as well, that sequel-itis had set in for good.

    Yet “Conjuring 2” outperformed expectations, topping the chart with an estimated $40.4 million, just a hair shy of the $41.8 million debut of the original “Conjuring” three years ago. And “Now You See Me 2,” for which predictions ran as low as $16 million, opened with an estimated $23.0 million. That’s below the $29.3 million debut that made the first “Now You See Me” a surprise hit three years ago, but it’s still at the high end of expectations. It’s also just $1.4 million below the premiere of “Warcraft,” the highly anticipated online game adaptation, which debuted in second place with an estimated $24.4 million.

    Why are there so many sequels this year — 17 in wide release so far? Why are most of them failing? And why are a few, like this weekend’s newbies, bucking the trend?

    The usual reason cited for the abundance of sequels is Hollywood’s aversion to risk. Properties that already have name recognition in the marketplace and at least some proven fan base seem less risky than original scripts. Indeed, of this weekend’s top 13 movies, seven are sequels, four are adaptations of previously existing titles, and only the two at the bottom of the list (“The Nice Guys” and “Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping“) are original screenplays.

    Nonetheless, even sequels have to start with an original idea somewhere. It’s worth remembering that “Now You See Me” was an original screenplay, and so was “Neighbors” which spawned the current No. 11 film, “Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising.” Someone at the studios took a chance on both of these ideas a couple years ago, and the gamble paid off, not just by launching a hit, but by launching a franchise.

    And that’s the business the studios are in now: not the sequel business, but the franchise business. Even before this weekend’s results were in, it was clear that there were likely to be a third “Conjuring” and “Now You See Me” in the pipeline. Not every franchise can be “Star Wars” or the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but no title will rest until the studio behind it has milked every last drop of spinoff possibility out of it.

    Conversely, this is a reason why Hollywood doesn’t make more movies like romance “Me Without You” (in sixth place this week). Doesn’t matter that the film cost just $20 million to make but has grossed $36.8 million here and another $18.4 million abroad. There’s no sequel possibility for this or most other movies that center on romance (notable exceptions: “Twilight” and “Bridget Jones’s Diary,” whose long-awaited third installment is due this fall).

    It’s not because of Hollywood sexism (or at least, not just because…). After all, horror movies lend themselves well to franchises, and they tend to appeal primarily to women. “Conjuring 2” star Patrick Wilson has earned a following by starring in two horror series (“Insidious” is the other).

    Of course, it helps if the sequels are actually good. Most of this year’s flop sequels got terrible reviews and weak word-of-mouth. “Conjuring 2” actually got pretty good reviews for a horror movie and earned an A- grade at Cinemascore, indicating very strong word-of-mouth. Critics. We’re much harsher on “Now You See Me 2,” but audiences gave it an A- as well.

    It also helps if the sequels are cheap to make. “Conjuring 2” cost a reported $40 million, which is a lot for a horror movie (the first “Conjuring” cost half that) but a relative bargain by summer blockbuster standards. Given its $40.4 million domestic debut, plus the $50.0 million the movie has already made abroad, it’s more than justified its cost. Similarly, “Now You See Me 2” cost a reported $90 million, still low for a summer popcorn movie. Even so, with only $45.8 million earned worldwide so far, the magician caper sequel is looking like a much bigger gamble than the paranormal investigator sequel.

    It’s where the sequels’ budgets climb into the nine figures that the math starts to become questionable, as this column noted regarding the new $135 million “Turtles” movie last week and the $170 million “Alice Through the Looking Glass” two weekends ago. These days, with marketing and distribution costing as much as production, and with theaters taking about half the grosses, a movie’s worldwide earnings have to be about four times its budget to break even. So any movie that costs $125 million to produce has to gross more than half a billion to be profitable. That’s a tall order for most sequels.

    But then, that’s where the final piece of the puzzle comes in, which is the overseas market. Lately, studios have been far too reliant on foreign grosses to make up for weak domestic sales. Nonetheless, audiences abroad tend to be more forgiving of sequels, more eager to see movies in 3D, and more tolerant of movies that rely more on spectacle than dialogue or character development.

    Take the new “Warcraft,” for example. (Not a sequel, of course, but still an adaptation of a familiar property with a built-in worldwide fanbase.) It cost a reported $160 million to make and earned less than $25 million here. But it earned $156 million in its China debut this week, beating the record set there last summer by “Furious 7.” Already, the fantasy game adaptation has grossed $286.1 million around the world, with 92 percent of its sales coming from outside North America. At this rate, the movie should ultimately turn a profit, even at a global break-even point of $640 million, and ensure that Universal’s plans for a “Warcraft” franchise move ahead, no matter how little American audiences or critics cared for the initial installment.

    It’s at this point where the studios’ sequel math begins to make sense. They’re going to keep turning movies (and books, and video games) into franchises, no matter how few of them please reviewers or audiences here. Because they’re not making them for us.

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  • ‘Inside Out’ Finally Beats ‘Jurassic World’ at Weekend Box Office

    “Jurassic World” has finally ceded its crown as the reigning weekend box office champ.

    According to new estimates that rolled in on Monday, “Jurassic” took second place at the domestic box office, placing just a hair behind Pixar hit “Inside Out.” “Inside Out” claimed victory with a haul of $29.8 million over the Fourth of July weekend, while “Jurassic World” took in $29.2 million in its fourth week of release.

    While “Jurassic” still remains king at the international box office (it’s already claimed the fifth-largest total on the all-time worldwide list with $1.385 billion in earnings), this change in the charts is a nice win for “Inside Out,” which was no slouch itself in its first few weeks in release, bowing to stellar reviews and a jaw-dropping $91 million for the second-biggest opening weekend ever for a Pixar flick. So far, “Inside Out” has claimed $245.9 million at the domestic box office.

    As Moviefone previously reported, those large sums meant trouble for new releases “Magic Mike XXL” and “Terminator: Genisys,” though overall, the box office is doing just fine for itself compared to this time last year. And with sure-to-be-hits “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay — Part 2” and “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” due out later this year, the movie business may see even more broken records before 2015 is over.

    [via: Variety]

    Photo credit: Disney

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  • The 7 Secret Weapons Behind ‘Home’s’ Astonishing Box Office Success

    rihanna and jim parson in homePoor Will Ferrell and Kevin Hart. Any other week, the estimated $34.6 million opening of their R-rated comedy “Get Hard” would be a huge coup. Instead, they had to settle for coming in a distant second to a surprise kiddie cartoon smash about a little girl and an inept alien.

    “Home,” the fourth film from DreamWorks Animation in little over a year, was supposed to race neck-and-neck at best with “Get Hard.” After all, the film got middling reviews for its relative lack of originality and unlikely voice cast (Jim Parsons and Rihanna?). Plus, it comes from DWA, the anti-Pixar, an animation house known in recent years for oversaturating the market and for costly flops (most recently, “Penguins of Madagascar”). No one expected it to do better than $30 million.

    So how did “Home” manage a stunning debut estimated at $54 million? Maybe its perceived weaknesses were actually strengths. Here are seven secret weapons behind the alien-invasion comedy’s success.

    1. Title Change. “Home” is an awfully generic title. It’s also not the title the property came with. Like many DreamWorks cartoons, it’s based on a children’s book. In this case, it’s Adam Rex’s, “The True Meaning of Smekday.” Normally, studios like to try to keep the titles of book adaptations in order to capitalize on pre-existing brand awareness. In this case, though, it made sense to ditch the title for a much less awkward, more marquee-friendly one. There’s no way a movie with “Smekday” in its name was going to earn $54 million.

    2. Word-of-Mouth. Critics tend to find DreamWorks movies formulaic; they tend to be about outsiders who learn to cooperate in order to save their world. “Home” fits this pattern (the alien even looks like the cute, snaggle-toothed dragon from DWA’s “How to Train Your Dragon” movies), and it borrows from several other familiar kid-meets-alien tales (see below). So it got middling reviews from critics. But kids and families who saw it really liked it and recommended it strongly, as is clear from the A grade it received at CinemaScore.

    3. Familiar Premise. The human-child-befriends-childlike-alien premise has been done before, in movies from “E.T.” to “Lilo & Stitch.” Then again, maybe it helped that the premise was familiar to kids from other well-known family-friendly movies. It may have helped the film overcome the “Smekday” issue of its arcane and eccentric source material.

    4. ‘Toon Drought. Yes, DWA has been flooding the zone over the past year. Still, there hasn’t been a new animated feature in theaters since “The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water” a couple months ago. And there won’t be another until Pixar’s “inside Out” in June. So “Home” was poised to benefit from the lack of direct competition.

    5. Voice Talent. Want to know how to get Rihanna and Jennifer Lopez songs on your movie’s soundtrack? Cast the pop stars as voice actors in the film. Sure, the husky-voiced Rihanna may not be the first choice for the role of a little girl, but suspension of disbelief is a lot easier with a cartoon. Jim Parsons is probably not as well known to kids as his female co-stars (do kids watch “The Big Bang Theory”?) Then again, who better than the performer behind TV nerd-king Sheldon Cooper to play an alien who has trouble communicating with and relating to humans? Plus, the presence of Parsons and Steve Martin in the cast probably reassured a lot of parents that the movie would be funny.

    6. Spring Weather. After months of brutal winter conditions in much of the country, spring finally sprung this weekend, allowing hibernating moviegoers to emerge for the first time in ages. As a result, a rising tide lifted all boats, enabling box office success not just for “Home” but for pretty much every movie currently playing at the multiplex. On the whole, domestic box office was up 16 percent over last week, and the estimated $152.2 million worth of tickets sold was the highest cumulative total since “Fifty Shades of Grey” lured moviegoers out of the cold six weeks ago.

    7. Counterprogramming. The strategy of trying to target a demographic otherwise not served by the weekend’s expected winner — in this case, “Home” aiming at families and young girls while the R-rated “Get Hard” went after adults and young men — hasn’t been too productive lately. Two weekends ago, older, male-oriented action thriller “Run All Night” flopped against younger, girl-oriented “Cinderella,” and last weekend, “The Gunman” repeated the scenario against “Insurgent.” But this weekend, there really was something for all the fair-weather moviegoers to enjoy, so “Home” and “Get Hard” both did well. So did still-strong “Insurgent” and “Cinderella” (this weekend’s No. 3 and No. 4 films), even though both films are attracting some of the same tween-girl audience, and “Cinderella” and “Home” are both big family-oriented movies with an emphasis on girls. Even “It Follows,” the cult horror hit that expanded this weekend from 32 screens to 1,218, performed well, coming in fifth with an estimated $4.0 million, very good for a horror film with no star power or franchise familiarity — and in a week when young women (who make up a preponderance of horror viewers) already had a lot to choose from.

    Even all these reasons aren’t really enough to explain how “Home” managed to open a jaw-dropping $20 million above even the most optimistic projections. Sure, word-of-mouth was great, but the movie was doing well even before that, with strong showings at Thursday night early-bird screenings and robust pre-sales on Fandango. Maybe “Home” was just an incredible fluke. Or maybe there’s some worldwide alien mind-control conspiracy at work…
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