Box Office Discussion: Good "Guys"

 The Good Guys has a decent opening, while The Northman and The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent have less spectacular starts.

In many ways, the pandemic era has been good for feature-length animation.  The Croods: A New Age was the highest-grossing film of 2020 released after the start of lockdowns.  Disney is on a hot streak, with Soul, Raya and the Last Dragon, Luca, Encanto, and Turning Red all winning critical praise.  Anime seems to have broken through, with the suburb box office results for Demon Slayer the Movie: Mugen Train and Jujutsu Kaisen 0.  Streamers had critically acclaimed winners in Wolfwalkers and The Mitchells vs. the Machines.  And while the films themselves were terrible, at least Tom and Jerry and Space Jam: A New Legacy introduced a new generation to classic stars of the golden age of animation.

Of course, the problem is that none of this was reflected at the box office.  Animation, which used to be about as reliable of a genre as you could get, has only seen one movie gross over $100 million in the last 2 years, and it was the predictably mediocre Sing 2.  If animation doesn't want to be permanently regulated to streaming, films are going to have to start putting up some decent numbers.

That's why the start of the new animated film The Bad Guys is encouraging.  The DreamWorks Animation title, based on a series of graphic novels, took in a solid $24 million over the weekend, the year's third-best start for a non-franchise movie, and the best for a film that's not a star vehicle.  While it is a long way from $100 million, good word of mouth and the lack of family competition (depending on how PG-13ish Bob's Burgers ends up being, Lightyear, opening in mid-June, could be the next wide-release family film) might help it to become the next 2022 title to hit the century mark.

Already well over the mark is Sonic the Hedgehog 2, the other family-friendly title out right now, which sped though another $15.7 million this weekend.  It is now up to $146.3 million, putting it past Uncharted for #2 in 2022, and it should zoom past the original's (pandemic-affected) gross by the weekend at the latest.  The lack of family competition will also help to juice Sonic's grosses, as it eyes $200 million.

Last week's champ, Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore, saw much of its audience disapparate, as it fell to $14 million, for a ten-day total of $67.1 million.  That this will be the lowest-grossing Wizarding World film by far is a guarantee.  The question now is can it even make it to $100 million.

Opening in fourth was violent Viking epic The Northman, which grossed an OK $12.3 million.  The film, which is rumored to have cost roughly $70 million, seems designed to play overseas, so any money it makes in North America is likely to be gravy.

Since Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance opened in February 2012, Nicolas Cage has only been in four live-action films that grossed even $1 million domestic.  That number became 5 as the extremely meta The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, in which Cage plays Nicolas Cage, took in $7.1 million.  Given the excellent reviews for the film, that's not a great total, but that's enough to make it his third-highest-grossing live-action film of the last decade.  That's not great news for Cage's career, but this film, coupled with Pig, does seem to suggest that Cage is tired of wandering through the straight-to-Redbox wasteland.

Art-house sci-fi smash Everything Everywhere All At Once continues to attract an appreciative audience, as the film declined only 12% from last week, popping up with $5.4 million and a total gross of $26.9 million.  The film should blast past $30 million in the next week or so, heading toward $40 and perhaps, if everything goes right, $50 million.

The Lost City continues to fade, as it found $4.3 million for a total of $85.4 million.  Father Stu proved that maybe R-rated Christian films, even with all-star casts, might not be wise, as it could only pray up $3.3 million, for a 12-day total of $13.9 million.  

Rounding out the Top 10 are two of the more disappointing flops of April.  Morbius was only able to come up with $2.3 million for a total of $69.2 million, while Ambulance sped away with $1.8 million for a total of $19.2 million.

With Doctor Strange and the Mulitverse of Madness on the horizon, Hollywood is only releasing one wide-release movie this weekend.  Memory is Liam Neeson's latest Old Man of Action thriller, in which he plays an assassin trying to hunt down his latest employers, who now want him dead.  The track record on these types of films lately haven't been encouraging.  Can The Bad Guys continue to do good work at the top?  Or could Sonic race back up to snatch the #1 spot away?  We'll find out next weekend.