Weekend Box Office Report: ‘Hitman’s Bodyguard’ Wins a Historically Bad Weekend
There are bad weekends, there are bad weekends, and then there are historically terrible weekends the likes of which haven’t been seen in decades. Guess which one applies to this past weekend? With the overall box office dipping more than $30 million from last week, and the overall numbers landing as historically bad, we seem to be ending August on a terrible note. Nevertheless, here are the box office numbers through Sunday afternoon:
Film | Weekend | Per Screen | ||
1 | The Hitman’s Bodyguard | $10,500,00 (-53%) | $2,976 | $39,614,004 |
2 | Annabelle: Creation | $7,350,000 (-52%) | $2,062 | $77,880,384 |
3 | Leap! | $5,015,500 | $1,948 | $5,015,500 |
4 | Wind River | $4,410,610 (+48%) | $2,095 | $9,840,823 |
5 | Logan Lucky | $4,366,894 (-42%) | $1,441 | $15,034,307 |
6 | Dunkirk | $3,950,000 (-40%) | $1,424 | $172,479,030 |
7 | Spider-Man: Homecoming | $2,725,000 (-36%) | $1,284 | $318,843,082 |
8 | Birth of the Dragon | $2,501,100 | $1,546 | $2,501,100 |
9 | The Emoji Movie | $2,350,000 (-47%) | $990 | $76,431,471 |
10 | Girls Trip | $2,266,745 (-42%) | $1,276 | $108,072,270 |
The big story this weekend wasn’t any particular movie, but the terrible box office numbers overall. This marked the fourth consecutive weekend where the total gross had declined, dropping from $110 million the weekend of August 6 to $48 million over the past few days. For comparison’s sake, there have been 14 movies released this year that grossed more than $48 million in their opening weekend alone, meaning that the entire gross of this weekend would only be solidly middle-of-the-pack if it were a single movie. Sites like Box Office Mojo have identified this as the worst weekend in over 15 years, so whatever people did over the past few days, it sure didn’t involve going to their local multiplex.
Adding to this slump was the quality of the new releases this weekend. Leap! finished in third with $5 million, but that’s a little misleading: the French/Canadian co-production has already opened well in other markets, and that $5 million brings its worldwide gross up to $63 million total, double its estimated $30 million budget. In any other weekend, it’s not hard to imagine Leap! getting buried, so at the bare minimum, the film took advantage of a sluggish weekend to break into the Top 3 of the box office grosses. That’ll be a good talking point for the Weinstein executives come Monday morning.
Birth of the Dragon, this weekend’s other new release, opened in eighth place with $2.5 million. Expectations for the film should’ve been tempered a little after it received pre-release criticism for sidelining Bruce Lee in favor of a fictional white character; for many people who saw it early, the movie was a frustrating story about the friend of one of the great martial arts icons, not Lee himself. Much like Leap!, this is a movie that might’ve fallen through the cracks in a more crowded playing field, so I guess finishing in the Top 10 at all is something to be happy about.
As for the repeat offenders? The Hitman’s Bodyguard took advantage of the down weekend to repeat in first place, grossing just a little more than $10 million dollars. That brings its domestic total up to $39 million in two weekends, unimpressive numbers for a blockbuster film but decent enough for a movie with a $30 million budget. Meanwhile, Annabelle: Creation continues to inch towards a $100 million domestic gross, earning $7.3 million in second place. This still keeps it on pace to match Annabelle, which was in the mid-$70 million range by the end of its third weekend as well. Of course, that film suffered a large drop between its third and fourth weekends, but with no new releases set for next week, it’s possible that Annabelle: Creation will outpace its predecessor.
Perhaps the biggest performer this past weekend was Wind River, which jumped six places from 10th to fourth en route to a $4.4 million gross. Wind River has already expanded into more theaters than Taylor Sheridan’s similarly plotted Hell or High Water ever did, suggesting that this movie might be on pace for a bigger gross despite a equivalent budget. After four weekends of expansions, it’s likely that this past weekend represented Wind River’s, uh, high water mark, but again, next weekend’s mediocre release calendar means all bets are effectively off. In fifth place this weekend is Logan Lucky, the underperforming Steven Soderbergh release, which took in $4.3 million to raise its numbers up to $15 million total. Last weekend we noted Soderbergh’s hope for a $15 million opening weekend, so taking two weekends to hit that mark has to be disheartening.
In sixth place is Dunkirk, which pulled in $3.9 million and is now up above $172 million at the domestic box office. My two talking points each week for this movie have been A) we’re still waiting on the film to open in a few key foreign markets and B) it’s pretty much keeping pace with Christopher Nolan’s previous film Interstellar, and hey, what do you know? Both of those talking points remain valid this weekend. Copy and paste. In seventh place is Spider-Man: Homecoming, which took in $2.7 million and pushed up above $737 million worldwide. Eight consecutive weeks in the Top 10 isn’t such a bad performance for this film, declining August numbers or not.
In ninth place is The Emoji Movie with $2.3 million, so here’s your obligatory link to our Critics Are Raving video for that piece of [poop emoji]. And finally, rounding out the list this week with $2.2 million is Girls Trip, which is now up to $108 million and remains one of the highest-grossing, lowest-budgeted movies of 2017, as well as our pick for the best comedy of the summer.