1.Good Boys (review)- $21M
It was a good weekend for Universal, which found itself with the top two box office earners. Surprisingly, the top spot was usurped by Good Boys, the R-rated original comedy led by Room star Jacob Tremblay, totally going against type. The biggest name by far was co-producer Seth Rogen, and they trotted him out in the promos to give people an idea what to expect. It was a smart idea. Rogen, along with fellow producer Evan Goldberg, are carving out a niche for themselves with maturer, raunchier stuff on the big and small screen. When we talk about people not going to the movies as much anymore, that does not apply to what Rogen is doing right now.
2. Hobbs & Shaw– $14.1M/$133.7M
3. The Lion King– $11.9M/$496.1M
4. The Angry Birds Movie 2 (review)- $10.5M/$16.2M
Do people still play Angry Birds? Certainly more did three years ago at the time of 2016’s The Angry Birds Movie, which flew off with $350M worldwide. Now, I’m not so sure, and the numbers on sequel The Angry Birds Movie 2 definitely don’t indicate a loyal fanbase. The film, which brings back mostly the same folks to voice animated pigs and birds, opened on Wednesday and earned just $16.2M. The first movie was pretty terrible, and this one isn’t a whole lot better. We’ll have to wait and see if Sony can break even on the $65M picture, but it’s going to need help from outside markets.
5. Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark– $10M/$40.2M
6. 47 Meters Down: Uncaged– $9M
The shark-infested sequel 47 Meters Down: Uncaged opened with $9M, and honestly, this is much better than I expected. It’s just $2M shy of its 2017 predecessor, which stayed afloat for weeks on the way to $62M overall. I don’t remember if they bothered to screen the last one, but they kept most critics away this time, and that may have been a mistake just as it was for Crawl a few weeks ago. But I see the logic behind it this time. At a budget of just $5M, everything after the first weekend is gravy so why run the risk?
7. Dora and the Lost City of Gold– $8.5M/$33.9M
8. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood– $7.6M/$114.3M
9. Blinded by the Light (review)- $4.45M
This took me by surprise. The critically acclaimed, much-talked-about crowd pleaser Blinded by the Light opened with just $4.4M. That would be fine if it weren’t in over 2300 theaters, but that $1.9K per site average is pretty ugly. The rock musical coming-of-age story follows a Pakistani kid in London, who falls in love with the music of Bruce Springsteen. I liked the film well enough, and reviews overall have praised it despite the sugary coating, but audiences just didn’t take to it. Perhaps they’re still reeling from Yesterday, or just tired of movies that play to the fans of a single popular singer.
10. The Art of Racing in the Rain– $4.4M/$16.8M
Not shocked at all to see Richard Linklater’s Where’d You Go, Bernadette (review) open to a dismal $3.4M. The adaptation of the best-selling novel is known for being infamously tough to adapt, with recent reports of behind-the-scenes squabbles on how to approach it, but still we’re talking about Linkalter and Cate Blanchett. But promos for the movie, about an architect/wife/mother who disappears from her family to go on a journey to find herself, were a tonal nightmare and, to be fair, that’s how the movie played out. For audiences to turn out for a film like this it needs overwhelmingly good reviews and Oscar buzz, which this had neither.
