Your Weekend Box Office Actuals (08.22.16)
1THE WEEKEND ACTUALS
Film | Weekend | Opening Weekend | Current Gross | |
Suicide Squad | $20.855 million | $133.682 million | $262.428 million | |
Sausage Party | $15.485 million | $34.263 million | $65.486 million | |
War Dogs | $14.685 million | $14.685 million | $14.685 million | |
Kubo and the Two Strings | $12.608 million | $12.608 million | $12.608 million | |
Pete’s Dragon | $11.349 million | $21.514 million | $42.911 million |
Suicide Squad can now add Number One for Three Weeks in a Row to its growing list of accomplishments. By making close to $21 million in its third weekend, the film topped the box office from Friday to Sunday, even beating out new films War Dogs and Kubo and the Two Strings, and making the predictions from last week more accurate than ever before. Still, it dropped 52 percent between the second and third weekends, only a little less than Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice’s second drop, and if it keeps up this steep decline, it’s not likely it will make the good impression many people were hoping it would make. It still has the most Twitter and Facebook activity of current films, but it’s not hard to see from the general state of the internet that people just aren’t talking about it much anymore. It happens with any film — or frankly, any subject on the internet in general, given how fast conversations move around here — but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s okay.
It’s not an overall win for Warner Bros. and DC Entertainment, but it will be interesting to see how Suicide Squad stacks up agains the two films it has most in common with — and the two movies it owes its relatively existence to. Those two films would be Guardians of the Galaxy and Deadpool. Globally, the former made $773 million and the latter made $782 million. Suicide Squad currently sits at $$575 million, so it’s definitely still in the running, and at least there’s that.
In the fight for R-rated comedies, as predicted, Sausage Party just barely edged out War Dogs. The raunchy animated comedy about food is certainly enjoying more success than people likely thought it would have. With about $71 million globally under its belt, Sausage Party is sitting pretty to reach the heights of some of Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg’s other films, having already beat The Night Before’s $52 million worldwide intake, and fast approaching the final results of Pineapple Express ($101 million) and This Is the End ($126 million). Given that various things are usually stacked against R-rated films, and movie-goers can be picky about comedies, the success of Sausage Party is a testament and something Hollywood should be paying attention to.
The same can be said for War Dogs, which, while it made less than half of what Sausage Party made in its opening weekend, it still landed smack dab in the middle of the top five films for the weekend. It’s had a less successful marketing campaign than Sausage Party did and it’s similar enough to other morally questionable comedies like The Wolf of Wall Street that it doesn’t quite have the absurd and original aspects going for it like Sausage Party did. With this opening, not even cracking $20 million, it’s not set up to become a huge hit, unless positive word of mouth miraculously changes things.
Family films reigned supreme earlier in the summer and while they’re still doing well, the waves they’re making are considerably smaller than before. At $12.6 million in its opening weekend, Kubo didn’t make a fraction of what Finding Dory, Zootopia, or The Secret Life of Pets made in their opening weeks, and the fact that it opened in about 1,000 less theaters can only partly explain this. It hails from the animation studio Laika, which has made some beloved films like Coraline and ParaNorman, but still doesn’t have the name-recognition or loyalty that other studios do. Kubo is already proving itself as a critical darling, and a Best Animated Feature nod at next year’s Oscars is a definite possibility, but given its debut, it’s not likely it will become a financial juggernaut. It’s the smallest opening yet for Laika, which is not an omen or anything like that, but it is a shame.
To my great pleasure, Pete’s Dragon was able to soar a little higher this weekend and keep its spot in the top five. It’s still not keeping up with most of Disney’s recent releases, but given they’ve had two movies crack $1 billion (Captain America: Civil War and Zootopia) and another get close (The Jungle Book) this year, I’m sure they’re not stressing out too much. It’s a shame because Pete’s Dragon is a genuinely wonderful film — at least it stayed in the top five this long, given it’ll be bumped off once this weekend arrives.
Finally, as has been predicted for months now, Ben-Hur made an abysmal $11.2 million in its opening weekend, which only looks worse and worse when you take into consideration its $100 million budget. Plus, the fact that audiences and critics alike have been tearing this film down since it was announced is only further fueled with its paltry box office performance. Needless to say, Paramount to a risk by remaking the Biblical epic and it’s not going to pay off. The other films making up the top ten are Jason Bourne ($8 million in its fourth week), Bad Moms ($7.9 million in its fourth week), The Secret Life of Pets ($5.8 million in its seventh week), and Florence Foster Jenkins ($4.3 million in it second week). Despite Meryl Streep being, well, Meryl Streep, Florence Foster Jenkins isn’t a bad showing financially for her work, especially lately as she’s taken on more and more smaller and art-heavy films.
(Source: boxoffice.com, boxofficemojo.com. Figures represent numbers at time of writing, and may have changed.)
Anya Crittenton | Associate Editor