Lionsgste’s “The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard” opened with a paltry $17 million over the five-day weekend. It’s a very meh opening for the sequel which is said to have a budget of around $70 million. It might not break even. The original opened to a 3-day $21 million, making a total of $75 million (on a $30 million budget).
Meanwhile, the disastrous numbers for critically-acclaimed musical “In the Heights” continued as it dropped a whopping 63 percent from its already terrible opening last weekend. Going from second place to sixth. And so, we went from "In The Heights is totally having a $30 million opening” to “It probably won’t even reach $30 million in its cumulative total”. Pathetic and embarrassing for its creator Lin Manuel-Miranda.
All of this to say that the current state of the box-office, and movie theatres in general, is in dire straits at the moment. Yes, “F9” may inject it with some much-needed momentum when it finally opens Stateside next weekend, but Americans don’t seem too eager to head back to cinemas anytime soon.
The top-earning movies of 2021 are a disappointing bunch:
“A Quiet Place 2” $125.3M
“Godzilla Vs Kong” $100.1M
“Cruella” $64.7M
“Croods New Age” $58.5M
“Tenet” $58.5M
“Raya And The Last Dragon@ $54.3M
“Conjuring 3” $53.6M
“Demon Slayer” $46.5M
”Wonder Woman 1984” $48.8M
“Tom And Jerry” $46.1M
I wouldn't call this film great — it stops short of that because of how neatly it resolves itself — but I'll give Rock his due here: this is much better than his previous directorial effort, "Top Five."