Box Office: 'Jumamji' Rocks, 'Pitch Perfect 3' Sings, 'Downsizing' Flops On Busy Friday

As always, the Christmas season is all-but drowning in new movies, a fact amplified even more by the now-standard pre-Christmas monster (Star WarsThe Hobbit, etc.) that now kicks the year-end blitz into high gear. There has been a lot of talk about whether merely being one of the biggest movies of all time is good enough for The Last Jedi, but we should note that at least part of the comparative downturn for the eighth Star Wars episode is due to a deluge of kid-friendly competition this time out. Speaking of which…
Sony and Columbia’s Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle is exactly the hit its creators needed. For Sony, it’s a chance to prove that they can successfully readapt existing IP in a world where rebooted or revamped IP is the most valuable sort of capital. And, since it’s a fun, well-made little movie, it’s proof that Sony can make decent tentpole-ish movies outside of the Spider-Man or James Bond franchises. For Dwayne Johnson, it’s a nice little comeback after the very public underperformance of Baywatch and it’s another kid-friendly notch of Kevin Hart and Jack Black’s respective belts.
The $90 million sequel to the popular 1995 Robin Williams fantasy earned another $12.5 million on Friday, up 66% from Thursday’s $7.55m which is turn was up 5% from its opening $7.2m Wednesday. This is the kind of growth that you want to see in a kid-friendly holiday offering. Sony knew they had a winner early on, showing off a buzzy CinemaCon sizzle reel back in March and offering a national paid sneak preview two week before its theatrical release. At a glance, we’re looking at a $33.3m Fri-Sun debut, a $46m Wed-Sun frame and a possible $62m six-day holiday haul.

That would A) be a terrific 8.65x long weekend multiplier and B) give the film a $64.2 million cume counting that $1.9m-grossing sneak preview. It’s a little early to talk long-term grosses, but it will have out-grossed Baywatch by Monday. There is very little precedent for a movie like this opening well over Christmas weekend and then just belly-flopping after-the-fact. A run like, for example, National Treasure: Book of Secrets ($77m six-day opening, $219m finish) gets Jumanji to $175m domestic while a run like Into the Woods ($58m six-day/$128m finish) gets it to $136m domestic. A crazy-good run like Sing or Night at the Museum will put it between $223m and $231m.
The next newbie is Universal/Comcast Corp.’s Pitch Perfect 3. The third and allegedly final installment of the refreshingly successful female-led ensemble musical comedy franchise began with a solid $10.6 million Friday, including a $2.1m Thursday preview gross. Universal knew they weren’t getting a repeat of Pitch Perfect 2’s $69m debut weekend (or $288m worldwide cume) when they plopped this one in Christmas. The question is whether it plays like Sing, whereby they get a much smaller opening weekend but much longer legs. Sing snagged $75m in its first six days towards a $270m domestic gross.
At a glance, the $40 million-ish Anna Kendrick/Rebel Wilson sequel is looking at a $26 million Fri-Sun/$35m Fri-Mon debut weekend. I’d argue that, at worst, this plays like Sherlock Holmes ($73m Fri-Mon/$209m domestic) and it squeaks by $100m domestic, not unlike Little Fockers ($33m four-day/$100m domestic finish) a year later. Since A) this movie didn’t cost a fortune and B) Universal isn’t playing Pitch Perfect 4, this can end up close to the first film ($65m unadjusted domestic and $115m worldwide back in 2012) and still be squarely in the realm of “okay.”
20th Century Fox’s The Greatest Showman isn’t holding as well as I had hoped. The film opened with a $2.5 million Wednesday, which offered hope of an Adventures of Tintin ($2.5m Wed/$23m Wed-Mon/$77m domestic finish) run from back in 2011. But the picture earned just $2.1m on Thursday and $3.125m on Friday, giving it an $8.7m three-day cume. We can expect the $84m live-action musical to earned around $9m for the Fri-Sun frame, $14m over the Fri-Mon opening and just $19m over its first six days. That’s not great, even if Fox is banking on post-Christmas family business.
At this juncture, even if the Hugh Jackman/Zac Efron/Zendaya P.T. Barnum biopic legs it like Tintin, it’s still only looking at a $64m domestic gross. Now Christmas is a time of box office miracles, but Fox is in a position where both of their holiday releases (Greatest Showman and Ferdinand) need respective kid-powered holiday miracles. And both films are the sort that bank on families seeing them at their relative convenience well into the holiday season. So yeah, me thinks that Fox is going to have to hope for an overseas rescue for both pricey holiday releases.
Paramount/Viacom Inc.’s Downsizing debuted on Friday in wide release, trying its best to be the adult movie of choice amid a crowd of kid-friendly crowdpleasers. But that’s a tough place to be when A) a lot of adults are seeing the kid stuff, B) the reviews aren’t exactly off-the-charts and C) there is a lot of high quality adult-skewing fare in some level of wide release. As such, with mixed reviews, brutal competition and most of the publicity concerning Matt Damon’s foot-in-mouth commentary about Hollywood’s legacy of sexual harassment, the Alexander Payne comedy earned just $2 million on Friday.
At a glance, that sets the movie up for a miserable $5 million Fri-Sun/$7m Fri-Mon debut weekend. Barring a possible Oscar nomination for Hong Chau, there is little reason to expect this $68m-budgeted fantasy, which for the record I liked just fine, to stay in theaters beyond the MLK holiday. This is another critical blow to both Paramount and Matt Damon and a poor end to another miserable year for the Viacom-owned studio. For their sake, I really hope that Mission: Impossible 6 is at least as good as Rogue Nation or Ghost Protocol
Warner Bros./Time Warner Inc. snuck out Father Figures amid the Christmas rush, hoping perhaps that no one would notice the poorly-reviewed Ed Helms/Owen Wilson/Glenn Close comedy. And at least in terms of ticket buyers, their strategy worked. The R-rated comedy earned just $1.365 million yesterday for a likely $3.3m Fri-Sun/$5m Fri-Mon debut weekend, and a likely swift grave soon thereafter. It’s a grim end to Warner Bros.’ pretty solid 2017 and a continuing of their post-It slump, but since WB releases 8,000 movies a year, there’s always a comeback just around the riverbend.
Finally, 20th Century Fox released Steven Spielberg’s The Post into nine theaters on Friday. The well-reviewed and sadly topical Meryl Streep/Tom Hanks drama, about the Washington Post’s attempts to release portions of the so-called Pentagon Papers while Richard Nixon was trying to keep said documents away from the public, earned $158,000 yesterday for a likely $500k Fri-Sun ($55.5k per-theater) and $725k Fri-Mon debut. That’s a strong start, but the big question is whether this one can play beyond the big city film nerd bubble when it expands next month. Fingers crossed, as the world needs more Steven Spielberg theatrical dramas.

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