Disney Takes Early Control of The Box Office, King Arthur Is 2017’s First (Really) Big Bomb and Is This The End of the Line For Aliens?
In my pre summer primer, I mentioned how summer would be filled with just as many bombs as it would be blockbusters and surprises. The first few weeks of May have already yielded both.
King Arthur: Legend of the Sword debuted in third place its opening weekend with a measly 15.3 million dollars domestically. It fell to fifth place this weekend with just over 7.1 million and will be lucky to cross the fifty million dollar finish line before it winds down its North American run. To put that into perspective, Warner Bros. invested 175 million into making King Arthur (before promotion and advertising), meaning they are praying it performs overseas the way Kong: Skull Island did. But while the King of the monsters drew over 398 million outside of North America, it built off a strong 166 million domestic run, numbers King Arthur can only dream off.
It Was Mother’s Day Stupid
In my review of King Arthur, I mentioned the glaring lack of strong female characters. All the women appearing in the pre-Gwenivere origin story could either be classified as damsels in distress or part of the background scenery. That probably isn’t the kind of movie that’s going to bring in the dollars on Mother’s Day. Snatched, starring Amy Schumer and screen legend Goldie Hawn meanwhile, was able to soundly defeat the Arthurian sword and sorcery tale (despite being made for much less) because it appealed to Mother’s Day moviegoers.
One of the reasons that Guardians of the Galaxy has been so successful has been its success with families. Marvel’s comic book space opera has somehow managed to brand itself a family movie, expanding its box office drawing power and putting it firmly on pace to outperform the 2014 original. Arthur was basically a testosterone-fueled action movie made for the boys and probably would have fared far better on Father’s Day weekend (although that would have pitted it against Cars 3 this year, so maybe it was doomed either way).
This may also mean that studios need to take a break from regular retellings of iconic legends (you can bet Lionsgate, the studio behind next March’s Robin Hood: Origins, is feeling a little queasy). And if everyone in Charlie Hunnam’s camp isn’t taking a long hard look at his career choices right now, they should be. Because after King Arthur, you can guarantee that every major studio in Hollywood is wondering if his number should still be in their leading man rolodexes (The Lost City of Z, Hunnam’s other 2017 starring role, has only managed to gross 8 million since its release last month).
Don’t Mess With The Mouse
Can the day be too far off when everyone else gives Disney’s releases a wide berth? Studios released precious little in April to prevent competing against Universal’s blockbuster Fate of the Furious, so when can we expect them to begin doing the same with Disney? Beauty and the Beast practically owned the box office in March, it has grossed nearly half a billion dollars domestically (1.22 billion worldwide) and is still hanging on to a spot in the top ten two months later. Disney followed that monster up with Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol.2, which dominated the domestic box office for its first two weeks before being narrowly defeated by Aliens: Covenant this weekend in a virtual photo finish. Star Lord and Rocket have over 301 million domestic dollars to their name and over 730 million globally in less than three weeks (though to be fair, it opened in a number of foreign markets before it’s enormous North American premiere at the beginning of the month).
And while Guardians is still going strong (already predicted to join the billion dollar club by some pundits), Disney still has Cars 3, Thor Ragnarok, Coco and Star Wars: The Last Jedi up their 2017 sleeve. Does any other studio really want to compete against that lineup? Disney only makes blockbusters these days and they hit it out of the park more times than not (they owned the top five movies on the planet last year, including all four billion dollar blockbusters), so when can we see the other studios giving them an equally wide berth?
Aliens Grounded?
Yes, Aliens Covenant opened number one. And no, a 36 million dollar opening is nothing to sneeze at. Except . . .
Not only was Covenant expected to open north of 40 million this weekend, Ridley Scott and Fox were hoping it would at least flirt with Prometheus’ 51 million dollar debut in 2012. It didn’t come close. Worse yet, Covenant’s word of mouth and fan reception has been underwhelming to say the least. Given King Arthur’s severe box office struggles, the only real competition it faced this weekend was Guardians of the Galaxy, a movie three weekends old. And it only managed to best Guardians by less than two million dollars.
Covenant will still turn a profit (a reasonable production budget of 97 million combined with a strong overseas performance will compensate) but to say that it’s anything other than disappointing would be an understatement. If anything, Covenant threatens to burn through what little capital this nearly forty-year old franchise still has with fans. And that will kill a property faster than a negative spreadsheet.
You can see last weekend’s box office numbers here.
Image: Warner Bros. Pictures
