Overall the box office was down 6.7% versus the same weekend last year when Captain America: Civil War topped the charts with $72.6 million in its second weekend. This weekend’s showing would have been a bit worse had not the teen drama Everything, Everything not over-performed.
In spite of its apparent box office victory Alien: Covenant has to be seen as a bit of a disappointment. Given the recent success of R-rated action films like Fox’s Deadpool, it is somewhat surprising that Alien: Covenant’s $36 million debut was so far below the previous film in the franchise, Prometheus, which bowed with $51 million in 2012. While it is not happening to all of Hollywood’s major properties, the weak debut of Covenant is yet another example of “franchise fatigue” in the all-important North American market (yes, the majority of big budget event films do earn more money overseas, but the studios get to keep a far higher percentage of the North American box office, so the domestic box office punches well above its weight class).
The critics liked Alien: Covenant, giving the film a strong (especially for a science fiction horror film) 73% positive rating on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, but opening weekend audiences, which skewed predictably male (62%) and older (66% over 25), gave the film only a so-so “B” CinemaScore, which doesn’t bode particularly well for the film’s box office future. Caucasians made up 51% of the film’s audience, with Hispanics accounting for 19%, African-Americans for 15%, and Asians for 9%.
The good news for Fox and Ridley Scott are the facts that Alien Covenant cost only about $100 million to produce (vs. $130 million for Prometheus), and that the franchise has always done well overseas (Prometheus earned 68% of its global total outside North America). The film opened overseas last weekend and has now accumulated $66.3 million over ten days, which is OK, but won’t make up much ground if Alien: Covenant can’t get close to Prometheus’s domestic total of $126.5 million. Right now it appears that Alien: Covenant will either have to develop surprising “legs” here in North America, or do very well in China, its last overseas market, when it opens in mid-June.
Disney’s Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.2, which dropped just 46% in its third weekend, has now surpassed the $300 million mark domestically and has a global total of $$732.6 million. James Gunn’s space opera certainly fared well in first major test, but will face competition from its own studio with the release of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales this coming week.
Teenage girls are responsible for the success of the YA novel adaptation Everything, Everything, which surprised box office analysts by finishing third with an estimated $12 million debut. Females made up a whopping 82% of the audience for the film, and 74% of the crowd was under 25—and while the critics didn’t like this emotional saga of a teen girl trapped in her house by an immune disorder, giving it just a 43% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, opening weekend audiences gave the movie a solid “A-“ CinemaScore.
Fourth place went to the R-rated Amy Schumer/Goldie Hawn comedy Snatched, which declined 61.1% in its second weekend, a steep drop for a comedy, which could mean that this $42million production, which has so far earned just $32.8 million at the domestic box office, could be in trouble, particularly since comedies don’t do nearly as well as “event” pictures in the increasingly important foreign markets.
Diary of Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul, which debuted in fifth place with just $7.2 million, appears to be yet another example of “franchise fatigue,” though it is only the fourth film based on Jeff Kinney’s popular “young readers” book series. The Long Haul, which features new actors in the key roles, was yet another attempt to “reboot” a franchise that appears to have gone off the rails in a hurry. The one hope for this film, which received only a “B” CinemaScore from opening weekend audiences, will be that it will still be around when the kids get out of school for the summer—and how it performs over the coming 4-day Memorial Day weekend will give us a good hint about that.
Speaking of going off the rails, Guy Richie’s King Arthur: Legend of the Sword appears intent on becoming 2017’s Battleship, the summer’s first official box office “bomb.” Dropping 55.5% from its disappointing debut weekend, the $175 million production, earned just $6.8 million to bring its domestic total to $27.2 million, and it is not exactly “crushing it” overseas where it has earned just $66.1 million (and yes it has opened in China where it managed just $5.2 million in 10 days).
Two films in the bottom of the top ten deserve some attention. In its sixth weekend The Fate of the Furious earned just $3.2 million to bring its domestic total to $219.9 million, less than half of 2017’s current box office champ, Disney’s Beauty of the Beast, which spent its tenth weekend in the top ten at #9 as it earned $2.4 million to bring its North America total to $497.8 million. By this time next week the live-action Beauty and the Beast will become the first 2017 film to top $500 million in the domestic market, something that The Fate of the Furious, which is suffering a bit of “franchise fatigue” here in North America will never come close to matching. Yet The Fate of the Furious has made up more than half of the nearly $280 million gap between the films in the domestic market, and trails Beauty and the Beast by just $108 million in global totals ($1.22 billion for Beauty and $1.12 billion for Fate).
Be sure to check back here next weekend to see if the R-rated comedy Baywatch, which stars box office titan Dwayne” The Rock” Johnson, or the fifth installment in the Pirates of the Caribbean series, Dead Men Tell No Tales, which gained a bit of extra publicity lately when it was supposedly held for “ransom” by computer hackers, can claim the box office throne. The Pirates franchise has been showing signs of wear, the fourth film in the series was the first that didn’t earn at least $300 million at the domestic box office. Will Dead Men Tell No Tales be able to revive it here in North America?
