So we are really in the doldrums now, as the last week of August saw a massively slow weekend at the box office, with Straight Outta Compton topping for the third week, but with just $13 million. That brings its new total to $134 million, which makes it officially the highest grossing music biopic of all time, passing Walk the Line's $119 million from back in 2005. It actually did face some unexpected competition this weekend though, which came from the faith-based War Room, which was panned by critics (as usual), but managed to upend expectations by coming in with $11 million, much higher than was predicted. Every once in a while a faith based movie will open out of nowhere with big numbers like this (relatively speaking, since they're so cheap to make and rarely play in wide release, as this one opened in about 1500 theaters), reminding people that there's an audience out there for this stuff, one that will give it an ecstatic "A+" Cinemascore.
The rest of the five were rounded out by MI:5, which has now earned $170 million, the Owen Wilson thriller No Escape, which opened on Wednesday for $10 million over the five days, and Sinister 2, which fell 56% to an $18 million total. But the funniest news of the week was the wide release (over 2000 screens) of Zac Efron's We Are Your Friends, a movie that cost $2 million to make and earned just $1.8 million from all those theaters, officially making it one of the biggest failures in box office history. Not even kidding. This thing played in a lot of empty theaters this weekend, guys. That's quite a notorious record to pull off. Maybe he should take a weird kind of pride in it, because that's going to be a footnote on his filmography for the rest of his career, should it ever go anywhere.
Top 5:
- Straight Outta Compton- $13.2 million
- War Room- $11 million
- Mission: Impossible- Rogue Nation- $8.3 million
- No Escape- $8.2 million
- Sinister 2- $4.7 million
In limited news, Grandma continues to play well, expanding into 19 theaters with a $16k average, the highest of all films in release, so that's cool. That will join Mr. Holmes as an indie film that found an audience in older crowds which don't get a lot of offerings to their sensibilities. Next week it's bound to be another bust with the release of a Jason Statham-free Transporter sequel (why?) and Robert Redford's drama A Walk in the Woods, which has barely been advertized. See you guys then, as the slump continues (probably until The Maze Runner movie comes out in September).
