The Secret Life of Pets dropped just 52% from its massive opening as it brought its domestic cumulative to $203.2 million. With Finding Dory and now Pets enjoying huge success, the robust return of animation to the front ranks of summer blockbusters has to rank as the major trend of this summer movie season so far. Hollywood’s attempt to cash in the public’s well-established love for animated features (and the lowering of costs in computer animation in recent years) has led to the production of lots of mediocre animated features in recent years, many of which came out in 2015 and tarnished the box office reputation of the genre (though obviously Illumination’s Minions and Pixar’s Inside Out were exceptions). But the industry has responded with strong offerings in 2016 including Disney’s Zootopia, Pixar’s Finding Dory, and now Illumination’s The Secret Life of Pets, which may well have benefited from the success of its 2016 anthropomorphic-animal predecessors.
The problem for The Secret Life of Pets arrives next weekend in the form of Ice Age: Collison Course, which has already earned $127 overseas (versus just $51 million for Pets). Now the Ice Age films have been losing steam domestically (and growing in popularity overseas), so the struggle to be next week’s top animated film might be a little more competitive than it appears at first glance, but it should be interesting to see if this summer’s trend of big openings for animated features continues or stalls a bit.
The estimated $46 million opening for Ghostbusters is actually better than Sony’s $38-40 million low-ball projection, but it is on the very low side for a film that cost $144 million to produce and has uncertain international prospects (there are restrictions on “supernatural” content that could keep the film out of China, the world’s second biggest market). Comedies do tend to have “legs,” and Ghostbusters will have to be very “leggy” to ensure that a sequel is made in spite of the positive noises that Sony has been making about continuing the franchise.
It is true that box office performance isn’t everything, if a film is perceived as a “successful” attempt to revive a franchise. Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins wasn’t much of a money maker for Warner Bros., but it did set the stage for the final two films in Nolan’s trilogy, both of which did very well at the box office. Ghostbusters currently has a very good 73% positive rating from the critics, and opening weekend audiences gave the film an OK “B+” CinemaScore with those under 25 grading it as an “A-.” If the film can do well enough to appear “successful,” then Sony will have incentive to continue the franchise with the current team intact. The key will be sustaining the impression that the film has triumphed over the “Internet trolls” who made this iteration of Ghostbusters the object of their misogynistic fury.
Females made up 57% of the opening weekend audience, and a whopping 63% of the moviegoers were over 25. Ghostbusters’ $46 million opening was the biggest ever for Melissa McCarthy and director Paul Feig, and it’s the biggest live-action comedy bow since Pitch Perfect 2 way back in May of 2015--it just isn’t clear that it will be big enough for a film that cost that much to make. If Ghostbusters can capture the broad appeal of Feig’s Bridesmaids, which earned 6.4 times its opening during its domestic run, the new Ghostbusters could end up with $296.4 million. If it becomes the “girls night out movie-of-choice” and performs like Feig’s The Heat, Ghostbusters makes it to $187.7 million domestic. If it doesn’t manage a multiplier like that, the franchise is in real trouble, absent a really strong foreign box office.
Another film that is struggling because of a bloated budget is Warner Bros. The Legend of Tarzan, which slipped to #3 in its third weekend of release as it earned $11.2 million to bring its domestic total to $103 million. After dropping just 45.5% last weekend, the new Tarzan movie slipped a modest 47.1% this time; the problem is the film’s $38.8 opening weekend was miniscule for a film that cost $180 million to produce. Given that the film was shot almost entirely in England on green screen without big stars, that budget appears to be wildly out of whack, even by Hollywood standards. It is clear that there is still considerable interest in a well-produced Tarzan film, but were talking “Tarzan” here, not “Star Wars.”
Fourth place went to Pixar’s Finding Dory, which earned an estimated $11 million in its fifth weekend, bringing its domestic total to $445.5 million, the highest domestic mark ever for an animated film topping Shrek 2’s $441 million in 2004. Adjusted for inflation Dory slips to #6, though it should end up at #4 or possibly even #3 trailing only The Lion King ($764.9 adjusted) and Shrek 2 ($609.6 adjusted).
The R-rated comedy Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates slipped 55% from its opening as it earned $7.5 million to bring its total to $31.3 million. Whether this $33 million production makes money or not remains in doubt, but it is already clear this movie won’t be the R-rated comedy hit of the summer.
The horror film The Purge: Election Year and the buddy comedy Central Intelligence both continue to show strong “legs,” particularly the latter, which has now earned $117.8 million.
The adult drama The Infiltrator, which stars Brian (Breaking Bad) Cranston, opened in 1600 theaters and earned $5.2 million with a modest $3,304 per-venue average. In a much more limited opening Woody Allen’s Café Society earned $355K from just 5 locations for a stellar $71,000 average—and Dinesh D’Souza’s anti-Hillary Clinton documentary The Secret History of the Democratic Party earned $82K from three theaters in---you guessed it—Texas.
Next weekend the anti-Hillary documentary goes nationwide, but there are lots of other offerings including Star Trek: Beyond, the third installment in the franchise that J.J. Abrams rebooted in 2009, the animated Ice Age: Collison Course, the R-rated comedy Absolutely Fabulous, and the heavily advertised horror film Lights Out. Be sure to check back here and see which films come out on top.