Marvel's Ant-Man took advantage of the soft openers to hold onto #1 this weekend, with a superhero-typical drop around 55%. Adam Sandler's effect-heavy nostalgia-fest Pixels managed only $24M as well, although many thought $35-$40M would be a great baseline. And it would have, but turns out that Sandler is still making shitty movies nobody likes, no matter what the source material was. With his Ridiculous Six hitting Netflix later this year, it looks like Sony should've dropped him when they wanted to, at least according to the leaks.
John Green's follow up to his smash The Fault In Our Stars - Paper Towns - fumbled out of the gate, only scrapping together $12M over its 3 day - which is less than half of Stars' opening day! How disappointing, and we have to wonder what impact this will have on Green's next two movie adaptations, Looking For Alaska and Let It Snow. And Jake Gyllenhaal's latest Method performance turned out to do well with general audiences, propelling Southpaw to the Top 5 with $16M and an A Cinemascore. It should leg out well, I can see it hitting $50M easily.
My streak of knowing nothing about PTA continues because the film I predicted wouldn't even place this weekend won the PTA crown, and that was IFC's Phoenix. That'll teach me to doubt anything having to do with WWII and/or Nazis.
This weekend's wide releases:
Vacation (WB) - Being debuted on a Wednesday in later summer, WB hopes to replicate the success of the very similar We're The Millers, pushing Vacation into over 3,250 theaters. This long-in-development sequel to the comedy classic, National Lampoon's Vacation, sees Ed Helms (of The Office and The Hangover fame) stepping into the Chevy Chase sized shoes of Clark Griswold, a put upon father who brings his family on a cross country road trip in a last-ditch effort to bring them closer. Making sure to frolic in raw sewage along the way, this vastly unnecessary sequel promises to "stand on its own". Christina Applegate, Leslie Mann (as Audrey!), Chris Hemsworth, Charlie Day, Beverly D'Angelo, and a bloated Chevy Chase make sure to pick up their checks on the way out.
This summer has been kind to the R rated comedy; Melissa McCarthy's Spy has passed the $100M mark and Amy Schumer's Trainwreck looks to do the same soon. But the underperformance of Ted 2 ($33M/$79M) and the outright bombing that was Entourage ($10M/$32M) shows that audiences are shunning low quality phone-in comedies - just throwing together a mildly amusing marketing campaign isn't enough anymore. Vacation is currently sitting at 27% on Rotten Tomatoes, lower than Ted 2's 46% and even Entourage's 32%, which has to worry WB that their comedy tentpole will suffer a similar fate.
WB has to be wishing for a performance similar to the aforementioned We're The Millers - their 2013 hit rode so-so reviews to $150M and the promise of a sequel. But We're The Millers had no comedy competition and monopolized the field throughout August and September easily, whereas Vacation has to contend with the still-popular Trainwreck, as well as American Ultra in a few weeks. Vacation will have to hope that everyone has already checked out Schumer's hit and that most won't be interested in a stoner action sequel to Adventureland. WB has been pushing this hard since the spring, and that should translate to a respectable opening weekend, but audiences will need to vastly disagree with critics in order for Vacation to sustain itself through the end of the summer.
The Prediction: Vacation will open modestly, but will need lots of love to survive R rated competition. $18M 3 day, $27M 5 day, 6 Top 5 points, 2 PTA points, with a total of $78M. Roll em up, kids - priced at $16 (BO), this has enough potential upside to take a flyer on it.
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Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation (Paramount) - After wisely moving the newest installment of the Mission Impossible franchise into the summer, Paramount has been bombarding TV and print audiences with their strong marketing campaign, and are now dropping it into over 3,800 theaters. This time around, Tom Cruise's Ethan Hunt must save himself and his friends from The Syndicate - a nation of rogue agents hellbent on destroying the IMF. The 4th sequel to 1996's TV adaptation Mission: Impossible, Cruise looks to have another summer action hit on his hands - one Paramount desperately needs, after the bombs Terminator: Genisys, Hot Tub Time Machine 2, and Project Almanac. Simon Pegg and Ving Rhames return to the series, and newcomer and Katie Holmes-look alike Rebecca Ferguson replaces Paula Patton as the woman in a ball gown that kicks ass.
MI: Rogue Nation will take advantage of the soft box office atmosphere, after Pixel's and Paper Towns' disastrous openings last weekend. The MI series saw a massive resurgence with 2011's Ghost Protocol, which grossed $209M after an amazing IMAX-only opening two weeks earlier. Paramount is hoping history will repeat itself and they've done their part - mimicking the Ghost Protocol to a T. They've focused almost exclusively on Cruise's Big Stunt™, this time being Cruise clinging on the side of a military airplane as it takes off. Most of us will remember that Ghost Protocol's marketing hinged immensely on Cruise clinging to the outside of the world's tallest skyscraper - the Burj Khalifa in Dubai (you know, the one Vin Diesel and Paul Walker drove a car through...).
MI:RN has been praised universally by critics, currently rocking an excellent 92% on Rotten Tomatoes. No action flick this summer, outside of Mad Max: Fury Road, has had a RT score over 79% and Rogue Nation is looking to break that two month streak. Mad Max: Fury Road ($45M/$151M) was able to thrive in the wake of Avengers: Age of Ultron and the surprising success of San Andreas, and Rogue Nation, with lesser competition, should easily best those numbers. Cruise's latest should easily loom over August's fare, especially with Fantastic Four's bad buzz and the dire lack of any smart adult-driven action films this summer. The best comparison is not another M:I installment, but Tom Cruise's 2005 big summer hit War of The Worlds ($64M/$234M) - it also opened in a soft field (Bewitched, Herbie: Fully Loaded, Rebound) against the third weekend of a comic book film (Batman Begins) and the weekend before a Fantastic Four adaptation (the Jessica Alba one).
The Prediction: Tom Cruise does it again - delivering a crowd-pleasing, infectious summer action flick that'll have soft drops and fantastic WOM. Rogue Nation will open to $62M, grabbing 16 Top 5 points, 8 PTA points, and totaling out around $205M. For $30 in Box Office, this is a must-have complement to your Minions or Jurassic World slate anchor.
This week's limited releases:
The End of The Tour (A24) - A24 has proven themselves to be a distributor that puts quality first, and that shows in the continued success of their limited releases. Just this year, Ex-Machina and While We're Young posted double digit PTA points and this month Amy posted 8 PTA points even with an aggressive expansion. The End of The Tour looks to continue that streak, being released in only 4 theaters this weekend against weak limited competition. The film stars Jason Segel in his first dramatic role and Jesse Eisenberg as renowned author David Foster Wallace (of Infinite Jest fame) and Rolling Stone reporter David Lipsky, respectively. Lipsky joins Wallace on a 5 day adventure as he tours Minnesota shortly after the release of Infinite Jest; Lipsky ended up turning the interview into a book, Although of Course You Become Yourself, a New York Times bestseller.
Premiering at Sundance earlier this year, End of The Tour has everything going for it to easily reach double digit PTA points and beyond. It's currently sitting at 89% on RT, an IMDb of 7.4, and has enough star power in Segel and Eisenberg to draw crowds that may not peruse art house theaters regularly. If Tour performs anything like Ex-Machina or While We're Young, or even Amy, it will have no problem topping $50K PTA this weekend. That would easily beat Mission Impossible, and with only one limited release next weekend, it'll grab 4 or 5 points there too. At only $4 in Ultimate Leagues, you pretty much have no choice in picking this up.
Beyond The Brick: A LEGO Brickumentary (Radius-TWC) - I could totally write up how Beyond The Brick was most likely green lit in the aftermath of The LEGO Movie but being continually delayed, it'll suffer no assistance from any sort of audience overlap. Or how one only needs to look to last month's Batkid Begins to see how child-aimed documentaries fare in a limited release. But honestly, Brick is being distributed by Radius-TWC - which we all know as the day-and-date arm of The Weinstein Company. And if day-and-date is enough to kill any interest here, the 93 theater count should be enough to steer everyone away from this title. If you still have this on your slate, drop it now and replace it with the same-priced Tobey Maguire chess drama Pawn Sacrifice - at least that'll have a chance of 1 PTA point. Which is more than you'll get here.
My predictions for the weekend of July 31st-August 2nd:
1. Mission: Impossible: Rogue Nation - $62M
2. Vacation - $18M ($27M 5-day)
3. Ant-Man - $15M
4/5. Minions/Trainwreck - $11M
PTA: The End of The Tour, Mission Impossible, Phoenix, Vacation, Irrational Man
Next week sees Yours Truly tackle the gritty reboot of Fantastic Four (yes, I said gritty...), the Jason Bateman thriller The Gift, Meryl Streep going full Rock Grandma in Ricki And The Flash, and the UK animated import Shaun The Sheep Movie.
This week in Box Office history...
1983 - Thirty-two years to the day, National Lampoon's Vacation opened against something called Krull and a Porky's clone in Private School. Vacation barely beat out the 2nd weekend of Jaws 3D, claiming the #1 spot with only $8M. It went on to have a respectable run, totaling at $61M ($158M in 2015 dollars) and became the 11th highest grossing film of 1983. Krull and Private School both went on to become forgettable 80s bombs.
