Your Complete Weekend Box Office Tracking, Predictions, & Analysis (08.11.16)
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Suicide Squad |
$45.5 million |
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Pete’s Dragon |
$26 million |
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Sausage Party |
$18.5 million |
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Jason Bourne |
$10 million |
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Bad Moms |
$7 million |
This weekend, Suicide Squad will face its most daunting challenge: the inevitable drop from the first to the second weekend. Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, the Warner Bros./DC film to precede this one, infamously had an incredibly steep fall of nearly 70 percent. While Suicide Squad, a film about a group of misfit villains who are banded together to fight even bigger threats than themselves, might not fall that much, it is expected to fall over 60 percent, which isn’t great, but also not a terribly unusual number for this genre (Captain America: Civil War fell 59 percent, Man of Steel fell 64 percent, both Ant-Man and Guardians of the Galaxy fell in the mid-50 range). It’s also worth noting that Suicide Squad has broken (biggest domestic opening for the first weekend of August, as well as the biggest domestic Tuesday box office, beating both Civil War and BvS), so whatever critiques there are to be found for this movie (and there are plenty), it definitely has some numbers to back it up.
While it’s expected to face a decent-sized fall, that won’t stop Suicide Squad from still placing first in this weekend’s top five. It will likely take anywhere from $40 to $50 million and that’s miles ahead of second place. Still, no one will be able to say anything definitively about Suicide Squad until more time has passed. There were many varying opinions about Batman v Superman when it was first released, with think pieces all over the internet clamoring to determine the film’s fate, but it wasn’t until the dust had settled that it could fairly be stated BvS had an impressive box office, but ultimately its inability to reach $1 billion and the terrible reviews it received meant it could not be considered an all-around success. The same will have to be decided for Suicide Squad, but we won’t be able to do that quite yet.
Spots two and three bring some much-needed new blood to theaters this weekend, and a shake-up for the box office. Coming in second place will be Disney’s new live-action remake — this time of the hokey 1977 flick Pete’s Dragon. The new film has the same name, although a completely different look. It’s receiving mostly good reviews (read our own here) and by both being a Disney film and a family-friendly trip to the movies, it should easily come in behind Suicide Squad. There are some potential hurdles it faces, mostly stemming from the fact that people either don’t remember the original film or don’t remember it well. However, in that case, audiences could go into the film as a completely original adventure, which is, after all, what everyone’s begging for these days. With its relatively moderate budget of $60-65 million, it should have no problem returning a profit for Disney (even with its ambitious marketing). At the very least, it will be more of a success for the Mouse House than Steven Spielberg’s The BFG which was made for $140 million and has grossed only $113 million globally, even if it won’t be able to come close to the likes of The Jungle Book, which made nearly $1 billion globally, or Maleficent at $758 million worldwide. Plus, families have already gone to see all their other options in theaters right now, giving Pete’s Dragon an advantage there.
The film families definitely won’t be seeing is the animated R-rated romp Sausage Party from Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t an audience for it. The film has so far earned an 87 percent from critics on Rotten Tomatoes and I hear people laughing whenever they watch a trailer. With its bold concept and talented cast, there’s a chance it could perform better than expected this weekend, but it is sometimes more difficult for R-rated films, simply given they limit their audience straight out of the gate. Still, it could very well perform better than other R-rated comedies of the year like Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates and Bad Moms or the tragically underrated and underseen Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping, if only for its strong marketing campaign and absurd humor. It’s also tracking well on social media, which doesn’t always translate to box office numbers, but shows people are aware of it and interested.
Opening Weekend | Current Gross | Facebook Likes | Tweets | |
Suicide Squad | $133.682 million | $161.087 million | 607,370 | 2,255,143 |
Pete’s Dragon | N/A | N/A | 84,202 | 16,880 |
Sausage Party | N/A | N/A | 787,022 | 28,909 |
Jason Bourne | $59.215 million | $108.521 million | 10,177 | 34,590 |
Bad Moms | $23.817 million | $55.461 million | 15,011 | 73,197 |
Rounding out the top five will be Jason Bourne and Bad Moms, hanging in there as we go through our final weeks of summer movies. After its strong opening weekend, Jason Bourne met its second weekend with a pretty significant drop of 62 percent and that decline is going to continue, which is simply the way of things when there’s so much competition in theaters. It’s shaping up to beat both the Jeremy Renner-led The Bourne Legacy, as well as the first outing for the franchise, The Bourne Identity, but still might come up short to actor Matt Damon’s second and third films in the series. It was news when Damon announced he’d be returning to play this character again, but there’s a chance the studio could end up cutting the cord after this film is finished making its rounds.
Meanwhile, Kristen Bell and Mila Kunis have reason to keep being proud of their female-led comedy Bad Moms as it continues to remain in the top five, probably for the last week. But with a worldwide box office of $63 million, it’s not a bad fare, especially given films like this always have minimal budgets. Both this and Jason Bourne have also slowly been decreasing their theater counts, which will always have an effect on box office.
The other new film of the week, a possible Oscar vehicle for Meryl Streep, Florence Foster Jenkins, will likely be a hit with older audiences, and scrape up a solid $6-7 million. It’s only opening in 1,500 theaters and speaks to a very specific audience, so it probably won’t do much more than that. It has a 90 percent on Rotten Tomatoes so far, with critics praising all three main performances, and as good chatter amongst viewers spreads, it should see a good performance over the course of its theater duration. Still, it won’t be enough to come in sixth place as The Secret Life of Pets is poised to make between $7 and $8 million in its sixth week in theaters.
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Rotten Tomatoes | IMDb | Metacritic | ||||
Critics | Users | # of Ratings | Stars | # of Ratings | ||
Suicide Squad | 26 | 71 | 96,390 | 6.9 | 114,212 | 40 |
Pete’s Dragon | 86 | N/A | 80 | 7.4 | 254 | 72 |
Sausage Party | 87 | N/A | 61 | 7.5 | 2,512 | 68 |
Jason Bourne | 57 | 63 | 41,185 | 7.1 | 39,161 | 58 |
Bad Moms | 63 | 77 | 22,563 | 6.8 | 4,375 | 60 |
Completing the top ten will be Justin Lin’s entry into the Star Trek franchise, Star Trek Beyond, coming in seventh place and likely making anywhere from $5 million to $6 million, which is slightly disappointing given it’s been in theaters for less than a month, but as I talked about earlier, it was hurt by Jason Bourne and Suicide Squad opening immediately after it. And with a budget of $185 million, it will only just cross $200 million globally this weekend, making its profitability for Paramount debatable. The final two films will most likely be the Kevin Spacey family flick Nine Lives (appropriately sitting on 9 percent at Rotten Tomatoes) and the horror film Lights Out.
(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