“Black Phone 2” easily won the weekend, beating previous projections a $27M opening. A big W for Blumhouse who desperately need a hit. The film’s star, Ethan Hawke, recently hinted at a ‘Black Phone 3,’ so don’t be surprised if that gets greenlit sooner rather than later.
With that said, we’re seeing a lot of films dropping like flies — there are a ton of them bombing at the moment; some sequels, a few originals. Hollywood is struggling to make movies that find an audience.
Take, for example, Benny Safdie’s “The Smashing Machine,” which dropped a whopping 82% in its third weekend. How bad is it for this A24-produced film? Well, really bad. It has basically ended its theatrical run with $11M domestic tally ($18M worldwide) against a $50M budget. The film only earned $320k this weekend.
“Kiss of the Spider-Woman” might actually have worse numbers. Bill Condon’s $35M-costing musical, starring Jennifer Lopez, grossed $180k over the weekend — its worldwide total is $1.5M. Whose idea was it to greenlight this thing?
Then there’s “Tron: Ares,” which THR recently claimed actually cost $200M. It dropped 70% in its second weekend of release with just $11M domestically. The worldwide tally is $102M. When you take into account that exhibitors take in 50% of profits, this one could very well be headed towards $100M+ in losses for Disney.
Given all the box office bombs I’ve just listed, Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After Another” doesn’t look so bad — at least in context. Yes, the film has only made $62M in North America, but what’s saving it is its international receipts. The film could very well end up with around $200M worldwide when all is said and done. Still, that won’t be enough for it to break even, not even close, it stands to lose over $100M, but earning 10 to 12 Oscar nominations will certainly make Warner Bros. happy.
I didn’t even mention “Roofman,” “Good Fortune,” and “After the Hunt,” — three original, non-IP fall titles that have severely underperformed at the box office. They all had fall festival bows, “Roofman” was the best-reviewed of the lot, and I do hope it eventually garners the love it deserves on VOD.
So there you have it: Hollywood’s struggles continue. There are plenty of theories as to why it’s been such a disastrous fall at the box office, but overblown budgets and poor receptions certainly didn’t help some of these films. The good news is that the coming weeks will bring buzzy titles such as “Predator: Badlands,” “The Running Man,” “Wicked: For Good” and “Zootopia 2” to pick up the slack — all four are projected to have big openings.