Monday, June 10, 2019

Secret Life of Pets #1 at Box Office; Dark Phoenix Fizzles



For the weekend of June 7-9, 2019, The Secret Life of Pets 2 managed to win the weekend. The sequel opened far below the $104 million the original opened to, so maybe this is not going to be the next Ice Age level franchise, but it’ll still ultimately be profitable.

Dark Phoenix, meanwhile, is the lowest opening ever for an X-Men movie, including the different Wolverine spin-offs. It’s also the worst reviewed of them all. Maybe they shouldn’t have taken the plot from X-Men: The Last Stand and made Sophie Turner the star while making James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, etc., take backseat roles. Perhaps it’s a good thing this will be the final outing for this cast. Expect the X-Men to lie dormant for a few years, then circa 2023, they’ll be introduced into the MCU.

Late Night opted to open on only 4 screens before going wide next week, and with a $62,000 per-screen average, it’s poised to do well in expansion, albeit against a couple other comedic offerings in Men in Black International and Shaft.

Of the holdovers, Godzilla’s dropping like a stone. Godzilla v. Kong is still the plan for 2021, but WB has to be wondering if they’ll be able to break even on the project. Rocketman hasn’t really caught fire the way Bohemian Rhapsody did. Perhaps the R-rating can be blamed, although A Star Is Born seemed to manage with one.

Many films seem to be underperforming what studios had expected, but the real overperformer has been Aladdin. And Disney still has Toy Story 4, Spider-Man: Far from Home, and The Lion King on the way.



Opens June 14
MEN IN BLACK INTL. with Chris Hemsworth, Tessa Thompson and Liam Neeson.
SHAFT with Samuel L. Jackson, Jesse T. Usher, Regina Hall and Richard Roundtree.

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