Sunday, August 5, 2018

August 2018 Box Office Kicks Off With Another Mission: Impossible - Fallout Victory And A So-So Christopher Robin Bow

As the eighth month of 2018 got underway, Mission: Impossible- Fallout continued to rule the box office with an impressive 42% second-weekend decline, giving it a $35 million second-weekend drop. Considering most summer blockbusters lose somewhere between 50 and 60% in their second weekends, this kind of drop is incredible for Fallout, especially since it's better than the 48% second-weekend drop of the last Mission: Impossible movie, Rogue Nation. With $124.4 million in ten days and zero big blockbuster movies opening between now and Labor Day weekend, the future looks bright for Fallout and it should have no trouble becoming the biggest Mission: Impossible adventure of all-time.



In second place we find the biggest of this weekends crop of newcomers, Christopher Robin. Grossing $25 million, this became the first theatrically released Winnie The Pooh movie to gross over $10 million on opening weekend, though its opening was far below that of fellow live-action updates of classic animated Disney tales like Maleficent and Cinderella. Produced on a $75 million budget, Christopher Robin was never meant to be as big as those titles, but they surely were hoping Pooh and pals could score a bigger opening than coming in just 18% ahead of the opening weekend of Pete's Dragon two years ago. If it follows the trajectory of Pete's Dragon, Christopher Robin will make $85 million by the end of its domestic run.

Another Summer 2018 comedy struggled to stay afloat at the domestic box office as The Spy Who Dumped Me grossed only $12.3 million, marking one of the weaker opening weekends for Mila Kunis as a leading lady. It's also a middling opening for a spy comedy, coming in only 3% ahead of the opening weekend for Undercover Brother from 2002. We've had a ton of spy comedies lately and that might have hurt The Spy Who Dumped Me, it just couldn't stand out as something fresh in the marketplace even with the presence of Mila Kunis and Kate McKinnon. Costing $40 million to make, this one will have to turn to foreign grosses for any hope of profitability.

Going down 39% this weekend, Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again grossed another $9 million for a domestic gross of $91.3 million after 17 days of release. Also in its third weekend this frame was The Equalizer 2, which eased 37% for another $8.8 million for a $79/8 million domestic gross to date. Despite the presence of a new family movie in the marketplace, Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation went down only 33% to gross another $8.2 million for a $136.1 million domestic haul. Meanwhile, Ant-Man And The Wasp had its smallest weekend-to-weekend decline yet as it dipped only 29% to add $6.1 million to a domestic gross that now stands at $195.4 million.

One of the last additions to the high-concept post-apocalypse YA-novel boom kicked off by The Hunger Games in 2012, The Darkest Minds, opened to dismal numbers this weekend as the feature grossed only $5.8 million, the eleventh worst opening weekend ever for a movie debuting in over 3,000 theaters. 20th Century Fox gave this one a minimal amount of marketing and what it did put out to promote the title just made it look derivative of other films in this subgenre. It's unlikely The Darkest Minds is gonna be able to hold onto its theaters in the weeks ahead and could close its domestic run below $15 million.

Like Hotel Transylvania 3, Incredibles 2 was unfazed by the arrival of Christopher Robin as it eased only 31% to add $5 million to a massive domestic gross that stands at $583.1 million. On the other hand, fellow family movie holdover Teen Titans Go! To The Movies had a sharp 53% drop this frame as it grossed another $4.8 million for a $20.7 million domestic gross. Right outside the top ten was Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, which fell 40% to gross another $4 million for a domestic haul that now stands at $405.6 million, making it the fourth title of 2018 to cross $400 million domestically. Eighth Grade expanded into wide release this weekend and grossed a decent $2.8 million from 1,084 locations for a per-theater average of $2,648 and a domestic gross to date of $6.5 million.

The newest Dinesh D'Souza documentary, Death of a Nation, grossed only $2.3 million this weekend, the third biggest opening weekend for a political documentary in history, but significantly below the wide release opening weekends of past D'Souza titles. In its third weekend of release, Blindspotting fell 48% from last weekend to gross another $660,000 for a domestic gross of just $3.1 million. Along With The Gods: The Last 49 Days grossed $329,000 in its opening weekend this frame from 48 locations for a per-theater average of $6,584. The biggest per-theater average of any title at the domestic box office this weekend can be found with The Miseducation of Cameron Post, which grossed $53,000 from just two locations for a per-theater average of $26,500. That's the second biggest opening weekend ever for distributor FilmRise (their biggest opening weekend came from a film playing in 12 more theaters) and is the eleventh biggest opening weekend per-theater average for a 2018 limited release. Keep an eye on this one, if FilmRise can expand it properly, this could end up being a tidy hit. Black Panther finally crossed $700 million domestically this weekend as it grossed $35,000, pushing it just past the $700 million mark, making it only the third movie ever (and the first ever not directed by James Cameron) to make over $700 million domestically. Finally, Never Goin' Back got off to a weak start as it grossed only $10,044 from 2 locations for a dreadful per-theater average of $5,022.

The top 12 movies this weekend grossed a total of $127.2 million, a weaker than usual sum for your average first weekend of August, but it was up 15% from the same weekend last year when The Dark Tower made a weak showing at the top of the box office.

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