Ugh, ugh, and ugh. That’s the state of our newcomers this weekend. I know, I know, summer is wrapping up, but that doesn’t excuse just how pathetic things were at the box office. There were a lot of empty theaters to go around, with only The Forge of all things doing what it had to. But more on that in a bit.
If anyone is happy right now, it’s Disney. Forget all of those clickbait “Disney is DEAD!!!” headlines you came across last year. The simple truth is no one delivers a hit quite like the Mouse House. They have the number one spot–again–with Deadpool and Wolverine, which crawled above the second frame of Alien: Romulus, which is also, for those paying attention, from Disney. I would normally add that the latest face-hugger adventure isn’t quite showing the legs some were expecting, but really, that’s not shocking when you consider how divisive this installment has been for some people (and no, I haven’t seen it yet, because I went to Borderlands instead last week like the smart person that I am). And hey, Inside Out 2 became the first animated feature to cross the $1 billion mark internationally. No one at Disney is glum right now.
Now onto our sad sack of new arrivals. First off, we have Blink Twice. The director of this film wanted to call it Pussy Island, so out of respect for her and not at all for immature reasons, I shall refer to it as that from now on. Pussy Island had a confusing as fuck trailer–is this a dark comedy? Apparently it’s a disturbing horror film? Is it both? In any case, Pussy Island made just $7 million against a $20 million budget, and if I’m being fair, it could be a lot worse, as we’ll see in a couple of paragraphs when we get to The Crow.
Moving on, we have The Forge, the only “winner” of our new crop, which made $6 million. This one was distributed by Sony and cost a measly $5 million to produce, so this is, like it or not, easy money. The Forge is a “sequel” (but not really) to 2015’s War Room, an extremely stupid faith-based drama from 2015 with an even stupider message which made a lot more cash than these types of Christian outings normally do. From what I’ve gathered, The Forge isn’t nearly as insane, with non-controversial themes like “be forgiving” and “be responsible” and “don’t get too addicted to video games” (wait, we’re going on about that?). Like Pussy Island, this had confusing marketing. Why is everyone carrying fucking swords? Is this film secretly awesome? I somehow doubt it. Anyway, with an A+ CinemaScore, The Forge reached its target demographic. Good job?
Okay, okay, now we’re getting to the big failure of the week. From the second its trailer was released online, it was extremely apparent The Crow was going to be a dud. Unfortunately, it seems as though Lionsgate realized this, as they just…gave up on this movie. Seriously, did you even know this came out on Friday? Because no one made any effort to tell you. And no, I’m not a member of the “you can’t make a remake of The Crow out of respect for Brandon Lee” club. It was 30 years ago, for crying out loud, so theoretically, this should have been able to work, but obviously things went very, very wrong here. The Crow opened to an absolutely pathetic $4 million. Ugh, ugh, and UGH!
Next weekend closes out the season with Labor Day, a holiday which Hollywood remains needlessly afraid of. You can actually release a hit during that time, but with the notable exception of Disney rolling the dice with Shang-Chi when the box office was virtually dead and recovering from COVID in 2021, no one has bothered lately. So expect for next week’s report to be even more dismal, if that’s even possible.
Anyway, the top ten, via Deadline
1.) Deadpool & Wolverine (Dis) 3,840 (-120) theaters, Fri $4.8M (-41%), Sat $7.9M Sun $5.6M 3-day $18.3M (-39%), Total $577.2M/Wk 5
2.) Alien: Romulus (20th/Dis) 3,915 (+30) theaters, Fri $4.5M (-75%) Sat $6.8M Sun $4.9M 3-day $16.2M (-61%) Total $72.5M/Wk 2
3.) It Ends With Us (Sony) 3,839 (+100) theaters, Fri $3.8M (-51%) Sat $4.5M Sun $3.4M 3-day $11.85M (-50%), Total $120.8M/Wk 3
4.) Pussy Island (AMZ MGM) 3,067 theaters, Fri $2.89M, Sat $2.6M, Sun $1.8M, 3-day $7.3M/Wk 1
5.) The Forge (Sony) 1,818 theaters, Fri $2.4M Sat $2.3M Sun $1.8M 3-day $6.6M/Wk 1
6.) Twisters (Uni/WB) 3,206 (-277) theaters, $1.69M (-41%) Sat $2.7M Sun $1.78M 3-day $6.2M (-38%), Total $248.6M/Wk 6
7.) Coraline (Fath) 1,600 (+168) theaters, Fri $1.36M Sat $2M Sun $1.55M 3-day $4.9M (-50%), Total $24.1M/Wk 2
8.) The Crow (LG) 2,752 theaters, Fri $2M Sat $1.55M Sun $1.05M 3-day $4.6M/Wk 1
9.) Despicable Me 4 (Uni) 2,591 (-197) theaters, Fri $1.06M (-34%), Sat $1.94M Sun $1.4M 3-day $4.4M (-30%), Total $348.2M/Wk 8
- ) Inside Out 2 (Dis) 1,850 (-350) theaters Fri $498K (-41%) Sat $903K Sun $699K 3-day $2.1M (-39%) 39Total $646.3M/Wk 11