Laika's 'Kubo and the Two Strings' has a soft opening
None of this weekend's newcomers boasted impressive openings, allowing WB's Suicide Squad to continue to reign atop the box office, pulling in $20 million, another 50% drop from last week, making it on par with Batman v Superman's trajectory. The movie has also now earned over $572 million globally, which is kinda depressing when you see how these crappy films just keep making enough money to justify continuing them, no matter how awful they are. When are people going to wise up? It might not be as much as they want, but if it had only earned maybe $300 million or less? Now that would the epic, in the red flop that the studio deserves.
Sausage Party took second place again, falling over 50% itself, for another $15 million and a new total of $65 million, which is a big hit for its $19 million budget. War Dogs came in third with a meager $14 million and a bad "B" Cinemascope, so don't expect that one to stick around, while Kubo and the Two Strings sadly landed in fourth with $12.6 million. The animated film has earned the best reviews in Laika Studios short history, but it looks like families aren't much interested in animation that doesn't look exactly like everything else they see. Too bad. Paramount's Ben-Hur rounded out the top five for a truly epic flop debut, earning just $11 million on a $100 million budget. See now that's absolute rejection from audiences towards a genuinely terrible movie. Can't they manage to do the same for the awful WB superhero slate?
'Ben-Hur' is an epic flop for Paramount
Top 5:
- Suicide Squad- $20.7 million
- Sausage Party- $15.3 million
- War Dogs- $14.3 million
- Kubo and the Two Strings- $12.6 million
- Ben-Hur- $11.4 million
In limited release, Hell or High Water expanded to over 400 locations for a $2.7 million total, a pretty good $5k per theater average, making it the rare platform success this year. It looks likely to overtake the other limited release films as the most successful of 2016, which kind of makes me wonder if this could turn into a sleeper Oscar contender, given its rave reviews. At the very least, if the critics come back for it at the end of the year, it could get launched into consideration. Meanwhile, Natalie Portman's directorial debut A Tale of Love and Darkness opened with a nice $18k per screen average. Next week it's the horror movie Don't Breathe, Mel Gibson's would be comeback thriller Blood Father, and the Obama date movie Southside With You in limited. Stay tuned.
