- The Flash (review)- $55M
Well, there go the hopes of more Ezra Miller as Barry Allen. This was always going to be an uphill climb for The Flash, after a couple of years of controversial headlines and serious allegations against the actor. But the $55M 3-day launch and $64M through the 4-day holiday is way below early estimates. Worldwide, the film opened slowly at just $139M. There’s really no way to sugarcoat this; this is really terrible, and probably spells doom for The Flash as part of James Gunn’s DCU. The funny thing is, it was Gunn who heavily pushed the film as “one of the greatest superhero movies ever made”, and audiences don’t seem to have cared. Nor do they agree with his assessment, giving the film a ‘B’ Cinemascore and 86% on Rotten Tomatoes. Critics felt less about it, giving it 65% on RT for now. Those scores actually aren’t bad, but hardly superlative. And this speaks to what can happen when your star can’t do any press. Speaking from my own perspective, I’ve had a lot of people tell me they refuse to see the film because of Miller and the accusations against them. When bad buzz spreads, studios would be wise to pay attention, and Warner Bros. is especially deaf to this stuff. They ignored it when bad buzz about Johnny Depp threatened to hobble their Fantastic Beasts franchise…and then it did.
2. Elemental (review)- $29.5M
Ice cold right from the jump was Pixar’s Elemental. This one had the stench of death written all over it, as early reviews were lukewarm at best. And frankly, Pixar has been in a death spiral for a while now, and this didn’t look like the kind of groundbreaking movie to pull them out of a creative rut. The $29.5M 3-Day total and $33.3M 4-day aren’t indicative of the response from audiences, though. It has an ‘A’ Cinemascore and current 92% on Rotten Tomatoes, with critics also liking it at 76%.
3. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse– $27.8M/$280.3M
4. Transformers: Rise of the Beasts– $20M/$100.6M
5. The Little Mermaid – $11.6M/$253.5M
6. The Blackening (review)- $6M
Horror/comedy satire The Blackening opened at $6M and should clear around $7M through the Juneteenth holiday. The Tim Story-directed film doesn’t feature any big names, but leans on a funny Scream-esque premise that makes light of horror tropes, only those impacting characters of color.
7. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3– $5M/$344.3M
8. The Boogeyman– $3.8M/$32.7M
9. Fast X– $2M/$142.4M
It’s a good thing Fast & Furious has long since gone global because international is the only thing keeping the franchise afloat. While the film sunk like a stone here, worldwide it has still sped to a whopping $676M.
10. Asteroid City– $790K
Powered by an incredible $131K per-site-average, Wes Anderson’s latest, Asteroid City, opened in six theaters in LA and NY for $790K and likely $890K through the holiday. Damn. It’s another odd little bauble of a comedy from Anderson, this one taking place at a Junior Stargazers event in a small desert town. Anderson die-hards are clearly down for it, and it’ll be interesting to see how it fares after expanding next week.
