It finally got knocked off its No. 1 box office perch this weekend by Fox’s Kingsman: The Golden Circle, the sequel to 2015’s Kingsman: The Secret Service, which was one of those “how in the hell did that become a hit movie?” films, which grossed over $414 million worldwide.
Golden Circle opened with $39 million, which is about $ 3 million more than what the first film did in its opening weekend. But it could have grossed even more if not Golden Circle‘s epic length of 141 minute running time hadn’t cut into the number of times theaters could show it a day.
But It is still going strong with $30 million, which was good enough for second place and it’s done over $266 million domestically and $478 million worldwide. However Warner Bros.’ other major release which opened Friday, The LEGO Ninjago Movie, was major disappointment for the studio showing signs that the whole LEGO movie franchise is played out.
The first LEGO film released in 2014, and simply called The LEGO Movie, was one of the those rare unexpected surprises a genuinely funny and inventive film which opened with $69 million and went on to gross $469 million worldwide.
The follow-up film, The LEGO Batman Movie, which was released earlier this year in February was entertaining enough, but the seams started to show and a lot of it was simply just tired. But it opened with $53 million and went on to gross over $311 million worldwide. Ninjago, however, underperformed making only $21 million showing that the whole LEGO concept has run out of gas. Warner Bros. obviously knew there was a problem with the film since they only screened it to a few select media outlets and reviewers. However the reviews, not surprisingly, have not been great saying the the whole concept is pretty much running on fumes.
mother!, to no one’s surprise, dropped big some 59 percent from last week and it’s struggling to just hit $20 million domestically. Paramount obviously knows the film is in trouble and tried some last minute salvage attempts to help the film such as changing the whole ad campaign for the film pushing it more as a suspense thriller, though that’s definitely not going to help.
They also somehow convinced writer/director Darren Aronofsky to give an interview for The New York Times in which he explained what the film was all about and what the characters and weird scenes represented. He compared mother! to great surrealistic classics of director Luis Brunel (though it doesn’t even come close to those films), claiming that the whole film was a metaphor for global warning — though anyone would be hard pressed to see that. That strategy didn’t help, and theaters will drop the film by the end of this week. Paramount for sure will be more cautious in giving directors creative freedom from now on.
The inspirational film, Stronger with Jake Gyllenhaal, opened weakly in a limited-opening, grossing only $1.7 million on 574 screens while Fox Searchlight’s The Battle of the Sexes, about the huge ’70s media event tennis match between Bobby Riggs and Billie Jean King, performed much better in its limited release grossing $25,000 per screen on 21 screens.
Full list:
1) Kingsman: The Golden Circle Fox $39,000,000
2) It WB (NL) $30,000,000 Total: $266,338,881
3) The LEGO Ninjago Movie WB $21,245,000
4) American Assassin LGF $6,250,000 Total:$26,180,459
5) Home Again ORF $3,311,821 Total: $22,347,652
6) mother! Par. $3,260,000 Total: $13,429,018
7) Friend Request ENTMP $2,400,000
8) The Hitman’s Bodyguard LG/S $1,850,000 Total: $73,597,979
9) Stronger R Att. $1,747,910
10) Wind River Wein. $1,265,285 Total: $31,653,034
11) Spider-Man: Homecoming Sony $1,100,000 Total: $331,893,662
12) Brad’s Status Annapurna $1,001,000 Total: $1,114,337
