“Pirates 5” and “Baywatch” to Make Waves at Memorial Day Box Office

3-Day Holiday Weekend Forecast

	Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales	$80 million
	Baywatch	$28.6 million
	Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2	$25 million
	Alien: Covenant	$20 million
	Everything, Everything	$9 million

Well, decently sized waves at the very least. Set to top the three-day holiday weekend with ease is the fifth installment in Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean franchise and while it may not be receiving good reviews and plenty of people may lament its continued existence, Dead Men Tell No Tales, which brings back original cast members like Geoffrey Rush, Orlando Bloom, and Keira Knightley, is set to bring in $80 million, if not a little more. This is on par with last year’s Memorial Day, which saw X-Men: Apocalypse, a franchise as derided as Pirates (both movies have received rotten scores on Rotten Tomatoes), open to $79.8 million (and, at the very least, is miles ahead of 2015’s Tomorrowland which opened to $42 million).

Made for an astonishing $230 million, Dead Men Tell No Tales has to do plenty of good business in order to earn a profit. Luckily (at least for Disney, if not for the fans who are less enamored with the universe these days), the franchise has always performed well overseas. In fact, two of the franchise’s films, 2006’s Dead Man’s Chest and 2011’s On Stranger Tides, both crossed $1 billion, while the other two, Black Pearl, the first film to kick off the franchise, and At World’s End, which concluded the original trilogy, made $654 million and $963 million worldwide, respectively. Like plenty of other blockbusters these days, the real story of Dead Men Tell No Tales will be centered less around its domestic gross and more around what it will make globally and, of course, as per usual lately, whether it can reach $1 billion.

Walt Disney Pictures

With an $80 million opening, it will have the fourth-highest opening in the franchise, besting Black Pearl but coming short of the other three films, showing, even with the extra time of Memorial Day, that the franchise is starting to lose its luster. Still, being a little lackluster is not much to frown over when the film is still expected to make hundreds of millions of dollars when all is said and done — if not more. However, there is another big question to ask of this film. Mainly, are audiences still willing to go to films headlined by Johnny Depp? His name has been mired in controversy and scandal and Alice Through the Looking Glass was one of the biggest flops of last year. Dead Men Tell No Tales will certainly make much more, that is evident, but audiences now have the ability to let their voices be heard in regards to Depp’s star power.

	Opening Weekend	Current Gross	Facebook Likes	Tweets
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales	N/A	N/A	24,533,728	94,323
Baywatch	N/A	N/A	411,012	73,599
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2	$146.5m	$310.9m	4,954	56,643
Alien: Covenant	$36.1m	$45m	13,739	141,465
Everything, Everything	$11.7m	$14.5m	22,375	28,920

Next up will be the second and final newcomer of the week: the Dwayne Johnson-Zac Efron comedy Baywatch, bringing the classic 90s show to the big screen. Unfortunately, it’s faring even worse than Pirates. Critically, it’s at a miserable 20 percent on Rotten Tomatoes and financially, it’s expected to struggle to even reach $30 million. For a comedy made for $69 million (likely thanks to all the explosions), that’s not terrible, and should it prove to have decent legs, it could turn a profit, but there’s also a good chance poor word-of-mouth will stop it in its tracks. The film officially opens today and brought in $1.25 million from Wednesday night previews, which is a good showing of the uninspired performance it should have over the weekend. Most importantly, though, this doesn’t bode well for Paramount which has already suffered from a weak start to 2017. The four films the studio’s released so far this year — Monster Trucks, xXx: The Return of Xander Cage, Rings, and Ghost in the Shell — have only grossed $146 million total domestically. For comparison, Disney has only released three movies so far this year and they’re at $822 million total.

Paramount Pictures

Speaking of Disney, Guardians 2 should edge ahead of Alien: Covenant, dropping far less than 50 percent over the four days to bring in around $25 million for its fourth week. The film, currently at $742 million worldwide, still has its sight set on $1 billion, but it’s starting to slow, making it unclear if it will actually be able to reach those heights. Still, movies like Guardians are in theaters for several weeks, meaning it still has a decent future ahead of it, but it also has major competition in the coming weeks. Alien: Covenant, meanwhile, like other blockbusters as mentioned previously, is making most of its money abroad. Domestically, the film is at $45 million and overall, it’s made $131 million. With a $97 million budget, it needs its international box office in order to make any sort of profit. It’s virtually following along the same lines as Guardians, though at a slower and smaller pace.

	Rotten Tomatoes		IMDb	Metacritic
	Critics	Users	Stars
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales	31	N/A	7.7	41
Baywatch	20	N/A	5.5	40
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2	81	90	8.1	67
Alien: Covenant	71	62	6.9	65
Everything, Everything	48	70	6.4	53

Finally, the YA indie romance Everything, Everything, based on the bestselling book, will continue to succeed. Looking at a very small drop, the film should be able to bring in close to $10 million over the next four days, increasing its chances of being a bonafide, if small, success for Warner Bros. Furthermore, since the film, which is a great bit of counterprogramming against all the blockbusters, is primarily aimed at younger audiences who are likely in school, the holiday weekend absolutely helps.

The rest of the weekend’s top ten will likely include Snatched, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, and beyond.

(Sources: boxoffice.com, boxofficemojo.com, rottentomatoes.com, imdb.com, metacritic.com. Tweets and Likes represent figures for this week only. Figures represent numbers at time of writing, and may have changed. Tracking Board does not report Rotten Tomatoes user ratings for movies that have not yet seen wide release.)

Anya Crittenton | Associate Editor