For ten years now, the Transformers franchise has ruled over the worldwide box office, with even incoherent garbage like Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen managing to crack $402 million domestically and becoming the sixth movie in history to crack $400 million domestically. This past weekend, the newest installment in the series, Transformers: The Last Knight, debuted to middling numbers that, to be fair, don't suggest the franchise has quite reached Independence Day: Resurgence levels of being flat-out rejected by audiences but it does look like moviegoers are tired of the same old same old Autobot/Decepticon brawls.
This past weekend, Transformers: The Last Knight grossed $45.3 million, by far the lowest opening weekend ever in the franchise. Even taking into account it's grosses from Wednesday to Thursday don't help much at all since it's $69.1 million five-day count is still beneath all the three-day opening weekends of every single past Transformers movie. From here on out at the domestic box office, if it plays like the two Transformers sequels that opened on Wednesday, it'll either end up with $138 million exactly if it's legs are akin to Revenge of the Fallen while playing more like Dark of The Moon will give it a $150 million domestic cume.
The massive brand name recognition of the Transformers world is obviously keeping it above water, but barely so and these results are a major fall from the previous entries in the series. What's going on to make domestic audiences abandon the Transformers franchise? Well folks, the game has changed in the summer blockbuster sphere and offering audiences the same o'l baloney isn't gonna work anymore if it ever did. The name of the game in big blockbuster franchises is making sure your various sequels and spin-offs are different from one another, that's how the Marvel movies , the recent Star Wars features, Logan and Wonder Woman have thrived. For this fifth Transformers installment, nothing new was added compared to past sequels. It didn't have the "Your favorite robots from that movie you loved are back" angle of Revenge of the Fallen, it didn't have the "Michael Bay is doing Transformers chaos in 3D" angle of Dark of the Moon and it didn't have the "Mark Wahlberg and a robot dino are along for the ride this time!" angle of Age of Extinction (a last minute attempt to brand The Last Knight as "THE FINAL CHAPTER" in a number of TV spots was hillariously pathetic in terms of giving this one its own identity). The Last Knight offered nothing new for audiences, no new genre for established characters to explore, no distinctive new characters to entice viewers, it just looked derivative of what came before it. If the Transformers movies really wanna do the whole cinematic universe parlor trick, they're gonna have to pull some kind of rabbit out of a hat instead of relying on solely what's worked in the past or else the box office for these titles is just gonna get worse.
And to any Paramount executives saying these domestic box office results are satisfactory, to quote Megatron, "You are either lying or you're stupid!"
Transformers weren't the only car-based property to make some cash this weekend. Cars 3 grossed $25.1 million this weekend, a 53% drop that registers as one of the larger second-weekend declines for a PIXAR movies (the only ones in the studios 18-film catalog that had bigger second-weekend drops were The Good Dinosaur and Cars 2), an indication this one isn't having particularly strong word-of-mouth. With only $99 million accumulated so far and Despicable Me 3 on its way this weekend, it's hard to see how this one cracks $150 million domestically. Holding much better this weekend was Wonder Woman, which grossed another $25.1 million this weekend, which is only a 39% drop from last weekend. In 24 days,. Diana Prince has grossed $318 million and she'll likely surpass the entire domestic grosses of fellow DCEU titles Suicide Squad and Batman v. Superman by Thursday to become the franchises biggest title ever. Looks like it's also on its way to beating out Guardians of The Galaxy Vol. 2 to become the biggest movie of the summer, an incredible feat for sure.
Despite getting a C CinemaScore, being the only horror/thriller movie in town seems to be doing 47 Meters Down well as it went down a fantastic 34% to gross another $7.4 million. That's a much better second-weekend hold than the 48% drop of The Shallows last summer and brings this one's domestic cume to a strong $24 million. By contrast, the Tupac biopic All Eyez On Me had a massive 78% plunge this weekend and grossed only $5.8 million this frame. This one having one of the biggest second-weekend drops on record is thanks to controversy surrounding the film's authenticity that has poisoned the movie's word-of-mouth, though it's still generated a great $38.6 million in ten days. The Transformers pummelled The Mummy this weekend with the Tom Cruise blockbuster grossing only $5.8 million this weekend (a major 60% plummet from last weekend) and giving the film a 17-day total of only $68 million. This one may struggle to hit $80 million domestically, though its international box office this weekend do seem to guarantee it'll be only the fourth film in history (following Terminator: Genisys, Warcraft and Ice Age: Collision Course) to gross over $400 million worldwide while grossing under $100 million domestically.
Going down 41% this weekend was Pirates Of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, which grossed another $5.2 million this weekend, bringing its domestic cume to an OK $160 million. Failing to really rebound after a poor opening weekend was Rough Night, which went down 41% to gross another $4.7 million this weekend for a 10-day domestic total of only $16.6 million. Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie went down 40% this frame to gross $4.2 million for a current domestic total of $65.4 million. Looks like this one will end up being the second-lowest computer animated movie at DreamsWorks Animation ever, only ahead of Flushed Away. Good thing this one cost only $38 million. Rounding out the top ten was Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 2, which dropped 41% to gross another $3 million for a domestic cume of $380.2 million.
Expanding into 491 theaters and doing solid business this frame was the Salma Hayek/John Lithgow dramedy Beatriz At Dinner, which grossed $1.8 million for a per-theater average of $3,702. That's a good enough result to warrant further expansion in the weeks ahead and with $3 million accumulated after 17 days of release (only three of those days being when it was playing in more than 77 theaters), this one should end its domestic gross north of $10 million, making it yet another summertime arthouse hit for distributor Roadside Attractions who have been getting really good at that subgenre in recent years with titles like Love & Friendship, Mud, A Most Wanted Man, Mr. Holmes and Love & Mercy.
Meanwhile, The Book Of Henry expanded into wide release this weekend, 646 theaters specifically, and grossed $936,995, a 34% drop from last weekend for a 10-day domestic total of only $3 million. Can this one crack $5 million domestically? We shall see. Paris Can Wait had another strong hold this weekend, dipping 14% and grossing another $612,057, bringing its domestic total to a pretty good $4.1 million. Premiering this weekend to outstanding numbers was The Big Sick, which took in $435,000 in its opening weekend for a per-theater average of $87,000, the biggest per-theater average of any movie in 2017 so far. Could we have the big indie crossover hit of the year here? I have a hunch we do...
Also debuting to super strong figures this weekend was The Beguiled, which grossed $240,545 from 4 locations for an excellent per-theater average of $60,136. Those are some strong results that bode well for the movie when it expands into over 500 locations on Friday. Meanwhile, Maudie expanded into 28 theaters and grossed $93,610 for a per-theater average of $3,343 and a domestic total of....well, Box Office Mojo says it's grossed actually a pretty solid $2.7 million so far since I guess it's been playing since April 2017? So weird. I'll say it's grossed $2.7 million total for now and try to get some better clarification soon. Finally, The Bad Batch finally premiered this weekend to dismal results, grossing only $91,074 from 30 locations for a per-theater average of only $3,036.
The Top 12 movies this weekend grossed a total of $135.2 million, a way lower than usual late June weekend that can be chalked up to the disappointing opening weekend of the newest Transformers movie as well as other recent underperformers like Cars 3, Rough Night and The Mummy. June 2017 as a whole ain't looking so hot right now; with only five days left to go, June 2017 has grossed only $822.7 million and it's looking very likely this will be the first June this decade to gross under $1 billion. Wonder Woman can only do so much and the majority of movies so far this month have underperformed (a weak crop of late May movies like Baywatch, Aliev: Covenant and the newest Pirates movie meant that not even some strong holdovers could give the month some life). This weekend also is the point in which the 2017 box office is finally running behind the 2016 box office at the same point, just even more bad news for this so far underwhelming Summer 2017 box office season.
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