Box-office prognosticators love to scrutinize why audiences don’t turn out for a movie, citing familiar theories like “franchise fatigue” or tossing around the notion that everyone is staying at home watching Netflix. Sometimes, the truth is as simple as moviegoers being able to smell a turkey from a long way off. It would certainly explain what happened to two big studio pictures opening this Memorial Day weekend.
Disney‘s $230 million-costing sequel “Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales” (32% on Rotten Tomatoes) opened with $62 million domestic, which on paper, certainly sounds like a nice figure. Unfortunately, it’s the worst debut of any film in the series since the original, and $30 million off the pace of previous entry “Pirates Of The Caribbean: On Stranger Tides.” Whether or not this will be a franchise killer remains to be seen. Disney will be looking abroad to balance the bounty of ‘Pirates,’ and in China alone, ‘Dead Men’ launched with $67.8 million, bringing the international total to $208 million. It’ll be interesting to see how this film legs out, given a very competitive summer season ahead — it’ll have to get to $654 million just to match the worldwide haul of the first movie. For Johnny Depp, the result is at least a minor step up, especially considering his last blockbuster for Disney, “Alice Through The Looking Glass,” was a gigantic flop, but one wonders whether or not his once considerable star power is waning. Hollywood doesn’t seem to think so, with Universal landing the actor for their Dark Universe monster movie series; however, perhaps Depp and the mouse house will take a break for a while.
Even the charm and social-media encouragement of Dwayne Johnson couldn’t spur ticket buyers to jump in the water for “Baywatch” (19% on Rotten Tomatoes). The film opened to a dismal $18 million, well off early tracking which started at $40 million, and then softened to $30 million before the start of the weekend. The narrative that The Rock is an unstoppable box-office machine took a big hit with this movie, which marks the worst opening for the actor since 2004’s “Walking Tall” (it should be noted, “The Rundown” even opened to better numbers than this). No matter how you slice it, the film bellyflopped, and you can bet it’ll be a wake-up call to Hollywood suits who’ve been eager to give Johnson big properties like candy.
Speaking of franchises tacking a tumble, “Alien: Covenant” experienced the worst drop in the top ten this week, losing 70% of its audience from week one, taking in a paltry $10.5 million (down 36% from where “Prometheus” was in week two). I can’t imagine this series, at least as far as it concerns Ridley Scott, is anything but cooked. While he spent the promotional run of the film proclaiming the followup would get in front of cameras within 18 months, I don’t see any responsible suit at Fox giving it a greenlight without some serious consideration first.
In box office milestones, “Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 2” hit $783 million after only four weeks in theaters. The film was #2 at the domestic box office this weekend hauling in a very impressive near-$20 million total. At this point you can pretty much guarantee ‘Guardians’ is hitting $1 billion. Domestically, it’s the second highest film of the year in the U.S. trailing the box office monster that is “Beauty And The Beast” ($1.2 billion). “The Boss Baby,” which is getting a sequel, is at $476 million and still could hit $500M. “Logan” has cracked the $600 million mark making for the third highest grossing ‘X-Men‘ film worldwide after “Deadpool” and ‘Days Of Future Past.’
At the arthouse, things were quiet, with only “The Berlin Syndrome” (a dreadful $932 per screen average) and the documentaries “Long Strange Trip: The Untold Story Of The Grateful Dead” and “Restless Creature: Wendy Whelan” going into release.
1. “Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales” — $62.1 million
2. “Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 2” — $19.8 million ($333.2 mil.)
3. “Baywatch” — $18.1 million
4. “Alien: Covenant” — $10.5 million ($57.3 mil.)
5. “Everything Everything” — $6.1 million ($21.5 mil.)
6. “Diary Of A Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul” — $4.4 million ($13.5 mil.)
7. “Snatched” — $3.9 million ($40.1 mil.)
8. “King Arthur: Legend Of The Sword” — $3.2 million ($33.8 mil.)
9. “The Boss Baby” — $1.7 million ($168.9 mil.)
10. “Beauty And The Beast” — $1.5 million ($500.5 mil.)