Moviegoers made Disney's latest live-action remake, The Little Mermaid, part of their world as it swam to a big Memorial Day weekend opening, while a quartet of poor unfortunate newcomers made very little splash.
(I should have posted this last week. Expect this weekend's later this week).
For whatever reason, audiences just can't get enough of Disney mining their back catalog to remake their animated classics into live-action (or at least live-action-looking) films. After America spent a collective $1.4 billion to see the re-dos of Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and The Lion King, of course the studio was going to also remake the first film of the Renaissance quartet.
As expected, audience flocked to The Little Mermaid, as the film opened to $95.6 million on the Friday-to-Sunday part of Memorial Day weekend. While that is off from the openings of Beauty and Lion, it compares favorably to the opening of Aladdin, which hit theaters four years ago for Memorial Day 2019. Aladdin would go on to make nearly four times its opening weekend gross, meaning if Mermaid swims in its footsteps, it could end up somewhere in the mid-$300 millions.
Audiences were heading under the sea, but most of them weren't hitting the road to Fast X. The thriller plunged 65% in its second weekend to $23 million, for a ten-day total of $108 million. This is the worst second weekend gross for the franchise since Tokyo Drift, the lowest-grossing of the series. Indeed, it's looking very possible that this could be Fast & Furious's lowest grosser outside of Tokyo and 2 Fast 2 Furious. International is fine, but its very possible that Universal might actually be ready to send the franchise to hiatus after the next entry.
Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3 has fully redeemed itself after a slow start, earning $20.8 million to bring its grosses to an out-of-the-world $300.3 million. While it's not likely to top Volume 2's $389.8 million, it should move past the first film's $333.7 million in the coming weeks. This should, at least for now, ease concerns that the superhero movie, which has become the cornerstone of Hollywood, is beginning to lose favor. That's good, since The Flash and Blue Beetle are due later this summer, and The Marvels and Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom are scheduled during the holidays, not to mention the superhero movie coming out this coming weekend.
In fourth, The Super Mario Bros. Movie is still earning money, even if the "Times Running Out" music is blasting out of the speakers. It took in $6.4 million to bring its total to $559 million.
In fifth are the first of two somewhat similar movies starring comedians who have never headlined a movie before, opposite legendary actors playing their fathers. Bert Kreischer first got notoriety as a college kid for being the inspiration for the movie Van Wilder, and today is known for performing his stand-up routines shirtless, despite having a physique roughly the opposite of Ryan Reynolds's. In The Machine, which appears to be his first live-action acting role since a bit part in a 2004 episode of The Shield, he plays a variation of himself, whose routine about ripping off the Russian mafia while in college gets him and his dad (Mark Hamill) kidnapped by those gangsters who are not happy about being a punch line. There was some early optimism that it could open as high as $10 million, but it ended up taking in only half that, as it came in at $5 million.
The second comedy, About My Father, stars Sebastian Maniscalco, whose stand-up act at least, on the surface, seems a tad more classy (he wore a tux in his most recent Netflix special) and also has considerably more acting experience, including roles in Green Book and The Irishman. The latter might be why Robert De Niro is the titular father in this, in a culture clash comedy where Maniscalco is introducing rude, crude De Niro to his fiancée's upscale parents. Audiences, who couldn't seem to get enough of this stuff when De Niro was starring in the Meet the Parents series, mostly stayed away, as it opened to $4.3 million.
In 7th, Gerard Butler stars in the second film in two months about a US operative and his translator trying to get out of Afghanistan. Kandahar opened well below what Guy Ritchie's The Covenant opened to back in April, taking in only $2.3 million. Covenant wasn't much to write home about, but it will likely finish ahead of Kandahar by a solid amount.
Sneaking into the Top 10 is the latest dramady from art house auteur Nicole Holofcener. You Hurt My Feelings reunites her with her Enough Said star Julia Louise-Dreyfus, who plays an author whose marriage starts to crumble when she accidently overhears her husband (Tobias Menzies) admit he didn't like her latest book. Feelings opened to $1.4 million and seems highly unlikely to do as well as Said did ten years ago, which of course was a completely different time in terms of how art house movies performed.
Rounding out the Top 10, long-running horror hit Evil Dead Rise scarred up another $1.1 million to bring its total to $66.2 million, while flop Book Club: The Next Chapter had a most unsatisfying conclusion, as its total reached $16.1 million.
Ariel and all will be trying to stay in first place this weekend against a pair of newcomers. Most likely to take the top spot away from her is Miles Morales, who swings back into theaters in Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse was perhaps the most acclaimed Spidey movie of all, but it also was a bit of a box office disappointment, grossing $190.2 million over Christmas 2018 and early 2019, which is easily the lowest total of the nine Spidey feature films. That said, Into had easily the best legs of any of the franchise, and proved to be a huge hit on DVD and streaming, so we'll see if a summer release date will pump up Across's grosses. Meanwhile, The Boogeyman, based on a Stephen King story, tries to keep horror's hot hand going with a tell of two sisters who become convinced that something sinister has invaded their house. Will audiences flock to see their friendly neighborhood Spider-Man? Could Boogeyman do a surprise jump scare to the top of the chart? Or will Mermaid send both to the mysterious fantoms below? We'll find out next week.
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