Weekly Box Office and Film Discussion Thread

[mr3urious]

Star Trek Beyond finished out on top this weekend, while incumbents The Secret Life of Pets and Ghostbusters round out the top 3. Meanwhile, Ice Age 5 wound up at a lowly 5th place with a far lower opening than past entries, showing that at least Americans are starting to get sick of the franchise.

It's even making less money overseas even though it still turned a profit. Though once we see a Chinese release, those numbers should rise greatly.

http://www.boxofficemojo.com/weekend/chart/?yr=2016&wknd=30&p=.htm

 

[Drtooth]

Star Trek Beyond finished out on top this weekend, while incumbents The Secret Life of Pets and Ghostbusters round out the top 3. Meanwhile, Ice Age 5 wound up at a lowly 5th place with a far lower opening than past entries, showing that at least Americans are starting to get sick of the franchise.

HOLY.....

REALLY?!

Seriously?

FINALLY! Wow. I'm glad Pets managed to overcome a stale franchise like Ice Age. It may not be the strongest animated movie of the year, but I'd say it's a tie with Angry Birds for my number three spot of favorite animated movies of the year.

I hope Ghostbusters hanging on is a good sign for the film. It seems to be doing modest, but not greatly. At any rate, it had a more solid opening than any film this summer that wasn't Marvel based, or Pets, or Dory. That should be something at least, since War Craft is only doing business overseas, Tarzan flopped, and even Independence day managed to damage their franchise more than Ghostbusters detractors could ever accuse that movie of.

 

[Muppet Master]

Well The BFG plummeted 77% this week to make less then one million, it's domesetic total is $50.8 million, so I was being generous with my $60 million domestic total prediction, it'll likely stay around there. It's worldwide total stands at a dismal $67.9 million, worse then MMW, except The BFG has a whopping $140 million budget, huge flop.

I'm glad Ice Age is finally going away, they really need to stop with these sequels, at least try to make them good and not just cash grabs, but at this point I don't think Blue Sky cares.

 

[mr3urious]

Suicide Squad is set to release at the beginning of August. I have a feeling it will get an Ant-Man level of success at the very least, considering how kind the dumpiest of dump months was to that film and especially to Guardians of the Galaxy two years ago.

At least Warner Bros. was smart not to release it on the same weekend as the Rio Olympics opening ceremonies, otherwise it would have been really screwed.

 

[Drtooth]

I'm glad Ice Age is finally going away, they really need to stop with these sequels, at least try to make them good and not just cash grabs, but at this point I don't think Blue Sky cares.

Blue Sky is a meh studio. Their best film they just did the animation! Peanuts if it wasn't obvious. And again, Robots was a superior film to Ice Age, but because no one saw it, it's almost completely forgotten. Maybe it was released during the period where we were told to hate Robin Williams, I dunno. he was fine in that movie.

Suicide Squad is set to release at the beginning of August. I have a feeling it will get an Ant-Man level of success at the very least, considering how kind the dumpiest of dump months was to that film and especially to Guardians of the Galaxy two years ago.

Ant-man was released in late July, and had modest Wolverine 2 box office take. Sure, it was no Captain America or Iron Man, but Ant-Man is a silly premise for a super hero, straight from the wacky age of comics. The film was kinda a contractual obligation and was essentially made to free up the use of Wasp at some point. But a freakin' enjoyable film none the less, and they sure ran the heck out of that goofy premise. Guardians was pure surprise, having an even weirder concept. It was the highest earning film of the year until Sniper came out. Suicide Squad will probably do well, considering how many fans are clamoring to see a Harley Quinn movie, her first proper appearance, actually. And frankly, it'll be nice to see a DC comics movie that's actually fun to sit through. There's enough hype behind the film, so I'm sure it will at least have a strong opening week. I'm just crossing my fingers, saying "for the love of Pete...please be good!"

Well The BFG plummeted 77% this week to make less then one million, it's domesetic total is $50.8 million, so I was being generous with my $60 million domestic total prediction, it'll likely stay around there. It's worldwide total stands at a dismal $67.9 million, worse then MMW, except The BFG has a whopping $140 million budget, huge flop.

I have no doubt that the same fate will fall Pete's Dragon, since it got even less marketing than BFG.

 

[Pig'sSaysAdios]

Disney really should've held some of their films back a year, which is a shame because it looks like BFG was pretty creative and a lot of effort was put into it. Literally the only months that Disney isn't releasing a film this year is February and October. At this point, Disney is it's own competition.

 

[Muppet Master]

Blue Sky is a meh studio. Their best film they just did the animation! Peanuts if it wasn't obvious. And again, Robots was a superior film to Ice Age, but because no one saw it, it's almost completely forgotten. Maybe it was released during the period where we were told to hate Robin Williams, I dunno. he was fine in that movie.

I have no doubt that the same fate will fall Pete's Dragon, since it got even less marketing than BFG.

Robots was a pretty good film, and it made a nice profit at the box office, but it got lost in the shuffle of similar animated kids films like most in the 2005-2006 period when second, third, and even fourth party animated studios started releasing animated films by the second, and there was a glut of animated movies. I agree for Pete's Dragon, has flop written all over it.

 

[Drtooth]

Disney really should've held some of their films back a year, which is a shame because it looks like BFG was pretty creative and a lot of effort was put into it. Literally the only months that Disney isn't releasing a film this year is February and October. At this point, Disney is it's own competition.

Disney's really has some chutzpah to think they can release a movie or two a month and have them be successful. Sure, Jungle Book was a shock of a surprise of a hit, but their other major successes this year were no brainers. Marvel, Pixar, their own animation studio. Their flops seem pretty obvious, too. Alice in Wonderland got bad reviews for being unnecessary a film, and came on the unfortunate downswing of Johnny Depp's career (mainly due to playing the kind of characters he keeps getting). Now, if you want to believe in the conspiracy theory that Disney was trying to screw over Spielberg (and I do...heh heh), I still doubt it would have done well no matter what Disney did. I'm not saying kids are illiterate little snotnoses who wouldn't pick up a book if it was blocking their smart phone, I'm just saying...uh...the big fantasy type movie based on a book better the heck be called "Harry Potter" and even then, only those who grew up reading it would be interested.

How can I put this? Remember when HP first became a movie and then every studio wanted in on that and turned ripoff books like Percy Jackson and even things that weren't supposed to be knockoffs like Hugo but turned them into knockoffs right down to the poster art? And all those off to the side wannabe fantasy movies failed or at least were quickly forgotten (how the *&^& did Percy Jackson get so successful that it even got a sequel, even if it failed big time and was in a dump month?). BFG unfortunately is a byproduct of that, no matter how hard they tried to avoid it. It looks like something that would have been made 5+ years ago, and would have flopped 5+ years ago as well. I don't think the thing would have been successful in a dump month, all alone.

 

[Muppet Master]

Simply pathetic for Ice Age 5. Week 2 saw it fall 51% to $10.5 million, I know I bring this up a lot, but that week 2 is lower then MMW, and this is Ice Age we're talking about. In 10 days it has managed just $42.1 million at the domestic box office, in comparision all 4 movies have made more then that in 3 days. It's not exactly blowing up foriegn markets either, right now it's made $211 million in foriegn territories, now that's fine for some movies, but for Ice Age, no. The fourth Ice Age had made $200 million at the foriegn box office before it was even released and managed a total of $715 million in total. I have a feeling this one wil not even come close to that total. They seriously should have stopped at 4 before they made the franchise a commerical embarrasement.

There's also Ghostbusters which now has a domestic total of $106 million, it's on track to close in on it's $144 million budget, though it probably will barely pass it or not at all. They really should have had a lower budget for that one.

 

[Drtooth]

There's also Ghostbusters which now has a domestic total of $106 million, it's on track to close in on it's $144 million budget, though it probably will barely pass it or not at all. They really should have had a lower budget for that one.

Considering the other movies barely getting most of their budget back this summer, it stands to lose the least amount domestically. The detractors are drooling over the fact it "bombed" when frankly it's made a crapload more than Tarzan, Warcraft, or Independence Day did.

Seriously, after all the whining about how Ghostbusters was going to ruin the legacy of the film franchise, ID4 2 managed to do worse for its film.