“Pirates of the Caribbean 5” and “Baywatch” Barely Cause a Splash Over Memorial Day

4-Day Weekend Results

	Film	Weekend	Opening Weekend	Current Gross
	Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales	$78.4m	$78.4m	$78.4m
	Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2	$27.1m	$146.5m	$340.5m
	Baywatch	$23.1m	$23.1m	$23.1m
	Alien: Covenant	$13.3m	$36.1m	$60.2m
	Everything, Everything	$7.6m	$11.7m	$23m

This year’s Memorial Day weekend was meant to end its four-day box office on par with last year’s but instead came short by more than $20 million. Whereas 2016’s top 12 movies for Memorial Day made $198.8 million total, this year’s top 12 made $173 million and that’s because of the underperformance of nearly every film, some worse than others.

The weekend’s top film, Disney’s fifth installment in their Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, Dead Men Tell No Tales, made slightly less than expected — $1.5 million less, to be precise. Coming in just under $80 million, which it had been predicted to top, it absolutely decimated the rest of the weekend’s films. The second-place film of the weekend, another Disney blockbuster, was more than $50 million behind Dead Men Tell No Tales. As was predicted, Dead Men Tell No Tales earned the fourth-highest opening of the franchise’s films, coming in above only the first film, 2003’s The Curse of the Black Pearl. Worldwide, the film is already at $326 million (this past weekend alone brought in $208.4 million, the 12th-largest overseas opening of all time) and determined to join two other films in the franchise, Dead Man’s Chest and On Stranger Tides, by reaching $1 billion. Furthermore, as a studio, Disney has now crossed $1 billion domestically for the year. This is the second-fastest a studio has achieved this feat — the first was Disney last year when they reached $1 billion by early May.

Pirates, of course, is not the only film to help Disney reach their latest milestone. There’s also Beauty and the Beast, which crossed $500 million over the weekend, as well as Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, which came in second over the weekend (thanks primarily to Baywatch‘s meager performance) with a fourth-weekend intake of $27 million, slightly more than expected.With a domestic total of $340 million and a worldwide total of $793.7 million, the film has now passed its predecessor and become the fifth-highest movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe in both realms. As a universe, the MCU has now made $11.7 billion worldwide and only seeks to increase this number in the coming years.

Paramount Pictures

As mentioned, the latest R-rated comedy topped by two big names, this time Dwayne Johnson and Zac Efron, Baywatch, floundered over the holiday weekend, barely able to stay afloat. The film made a little over $23 million over the course of the four days, less than our predicted $28 million, and definitely less than the $30 million+ Paramount was hoping it would bring in for its opening weekend. Most have been comparing the film to 2012’s 21 Jump Street, both in terms of hoping Baywatch had been as good critically and financially. 21 Jump Street, however, made $36 million in its opening weekend and its predecessor earned $57 million, both clearly lightyears ahead of this raunchy comedy based on an older TV show. Now, the studio has to hope it does better outside of North America as it opens in 31 foreign markets this upcoming weekend.

Alien: Covenant and Everything, Everything, two wildly different films, round out the top five for the weekend. Both, as well, also made less than expected, the newest Alien is especially. Where Alien: Covenant, a sequel to Prometheus and a new prequel to Alien, which has suffered from marketing and confusion over its timeline, was expected to make around $20 million, dropping less than 50 percent, it instead made only a little over $13 million, dropping an embarrassing 63 percent (its three-day weekend drop of 70.6 percent is the second largest second weekend drop for a film playing in over 3,700 theaters). It’s now the fifth-highest film in the franchise, but still over $18 million away from topping Alien and at the miserable rate it’s going, it’s still a question of whether or not it will be able to do so.

Finally, the adaptation of the YA romance novel Everything, Everything dropped 34.6 percent over the four days, bringing its domestic total to $23 million on a $10 million budget.

The rest of the holiday weekend’s top ten includes Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Snatched, King Arthur, The Boss Baby, and Fate of the Furious, almost all of which made $5 million or less.

(Source: boxoffice.com, boxofficemojo.com. Figures represent numbers at time of writing, and may have changed.)

Anya Crittenton | Associate Editor