Jurassic Park: Dominion scores an upset win, as Lightyear crashes on takeoff, and the bottom falls out of the lower half of the Top 10.
On one level, the summer movie season is going great. There have been three openings over $100 million, which is two more than the summer of 2019 had at this point. We've had two films top $400 million domestically, with another on its way there. And yet, once you get past the top titles, the mid-level films have all but completely disappeared, making a box office that is far more absurdly top-heavy than any in recent memory.
Jurassic World: Dominion won for the second weekend in a row, as the dinos chomped through another $59.2 million, to bring the franchise-closer(?) to a ten-day total of $250.3 million. This is an acceptable 60% drop from its opening, and so far the film is largely keeping pace with its predecessor, 2018's Jurassic Park: Fallen Kingdom, which was around $266 million at the end of its second weekend. Fallen Kingdom finished around $418 million, meaning that a $400 million final seems likely for the sixth installment of a franchise that has been going on for nearly 30 years now.
Stumbling badly into second is Lightyear, Pixar's attempt to spin off the Toy Story movies into an origin story for the Buzz Lightyear character, and the first film from the studio to hit theaters since Onward had the unfortunate timing to open only a few days before Covid-related mass shutdowns began. Plenty of ink, digital and otherwise, has already been spent trying to figure out why the film could only pull $50.6 million in its opening weekend, though I haven't seen anyone mention the ongoing struggle of animation to get a foothold in this new environment. Sing 2 is still the only animated title to hit $100 million since the beginning of 2020. Lightyear will most likely eventually join it, as its still Pixar, its really the only family-friendly film out there, other than the two-month-old The Bad Guys, and with school out now across the country, it should do well on weekdays. However, its time as the only preeminent family film out is short, as Minions: The Rise of Gru opens in only a week and a half.
Continuing to take everyone's breath away, Top Gun: Maverick flew to another $44.7 million over the weekend, which is just the 2nd-highest 4th weekend total of all time, behind only Avatar's. America's continuing contributions to the the Tom Cruise 60th Birthday Fund has brought the film to $466.8 million total, allowing it to not just pass Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness to become the year's highest-grossing film, but leave it well behind, even though the two films only passed each other early last week. At this point, it seems certain that Top Gun will be the summer's highest-grosser (only Thor: Love & Thunder might be a legitimate challenger), and could very well have clinched being the year's highest-grosser as well (besides Thor, only November's Black Panther: Wakanda Forever and December's Avatar: The Way of the Water stand in the way).
After those three, the drop is precipitous. The aforementioned Doctor Strange came in fourth with $4.5 million, bringing its total to $405.3 million, an impressive haul, but given that Strange was still ahead of Top Gun just ten days ago, it also serves as a statement to just how quickly Maverick is making money. After that, The Bob's Burgers Movie brought in $1.2 million for a gross of $29.8 million, and the long-running Bad Guys made $1 million for a total of $94.3 million. And those were the only films to take in over a million last weekend.
So what's going on? The main culprit is just the utter lack of new product. If we count May 6th, the day Doctor Strange opened, as the beginning of the 2022 Summer Movie Season, we've seen only eight movies open on over a thousand screens (9, if you want to could Morbius's short-lived, ill-fated return to wide release in early June). Meanwhile, the first two weekends of May 2019 alone saw 7 wide releases. Despite being only a bit over a week away from July, June has only seen two new films go wide all month (that number will double this weekend). Even last year, counting from the first Friday in May, there were 14 new wide releases over the first 7 weekends of summer. Whether this is because of the rush by studios to send product to the streamers, or Covid-related production delays, or just cold feet to send smaller films up against the blockbusters (understandable, given that none of the four smaller films has remotely broken out, though April release The Bad Guys and March release Everything Everywhere All At Once have both been playing strongly throughout this season), the result is a great dearth of product. The situation does seem on the verge of relief, though. Right now, there are 8 films scheduled to go wide in July, and another 12 in August, and the release schedule for the rest of the year also looks relatively full. Let's keep our fingers crossed that most of those films do indeed hit the multiplexes, as the box office can't survive on dinosaurs and fighter jets alone.
Anyway, to round out the Top 10, the aforementioned Everything Everywhere finished just below a million, with a new gross of $64.9 million. Finishing well below a million was Downton Abbey: A New Era, whose gross is now $42.2 million, and Sonic the Hedgehog 2, which is up to $190.5 million. Opening in tenth is British arthouse comedy Brian and Charles, about a man and his homemade robot, starring no one you've ever heard of. The film brought in only $0.2 million, had a per-screen of less than $1,000, and yet is in the weekend Top 10. Those 8 new July movies can't arrive fast enough.
Two new movies open this weekend to challenge Jurassic World for the top spot. Elvis is Baz Luhrmann's biopic of the King of Rock 'n' Roll, starring Austin Butler as Presley and Tom Hanks as his manipulative manager Col. Tom Parker. This is Luhrmann's first film since The Great Gatsby became a surprise blockbuster 9 years ago. Meanwhile, The Black Phone, from Scott Derrickson, who has directed a number of cult horror hits and also the first Doctor Strange, is a supernatural horror film about a teenage boy (Mason Thames, making his film debut) kidnapped by a serial killer (Ethan Hawke) who starts getting calls from Hawke's previous victims on the titular phone in Hawke's basement. While I wouldn't be shocked to see either film topping this weekend, I also could see World threepeating. We'll find out who comes out on top next week.
No comments:
Post a Comment