“Spinal Tap II: The End Continues” is this weekend’s big mystery. The $25M sequel opened Thursday night, and yet — no official box office reports from Bleecker Street. The studio has all but ignored it. Producers must be fuming about the lacklustre marketing.
Reviews are mixed — not a disaster, but not glowing either. Audience reaction, however, tells another story: an impressive 88% on Rotten Tomatoes. The few who turned out opening night were the diehards — and they liked what they saw, handing the film a solid A- CinemaScore.
Still, it’s come to the point where even the trades have had to hunt down exhibitors themselves to piece together the numbers. THR and Deadline are reporting that ‘Spinal Tap II’ is opening to about $1.5M across roughly 2,000 theaters. That works out to a weak $800 per theater average — dismal territory for what was billed as a wide release.
It’s worth noting this was merely a distribution deal for Bleecker Street, which means they’re only on the hook for prints and advertising. Still, the optics aren’t great.
Rob Reiner’s original “This Is Spinal Tap” (1984) laid the groundwork for Christopher Guest’s 1990s–2000s mockumentary revolution (”Best in Show,” “Waiting For Guffman”). The biggest opener of that era? “A Mighty Wind” (2003), which took in $2.1M at just 133 theaters.
The reviews certainly didn’t help matters. With a 59 Metascore, the sequel clearly struggles to recapture the original’s breakneck laugh-per-minute ratio, leaving audiences with more nostalgia than genuine comedy.
If anything, the broader play for ‘Spinal Tap II,’ like the original, will almost certainly be home viewing and ancillary markets, where cult status builds up over time, or at least that seems to be the hope.
While James L. Brooks teased last year that "we'll soon be seeing" Jack Nicholson, 89, act again, and that he was "reading scripts," that idea has now been shut down by his close friend Michael Douglas, 82.