‘Solo’ stays but plummets in second weekend at box office
WITH no new summer blockbusters opening, ‘Solo: A Star Wars Story’ topped the box office for a second weekend. But it sank 65 per cent from its debut, underscoring how badly the film has underperformed its predecessors.
The Walt Disney Co. Han Solo origin story collected US$29.3 million in theatres in the US and Canada, ComScore Inc. estimated in an email Sunday. Three new movies -- ‘Adrift’,“‘Upgrade’ and ‘Action Point’placed third, sixth and ninth, respectively.
The falloff in ‘Solo’ tickets sales was expected by analysts, as many Memorial Day releases like ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ saw more than 60 per cent drops in the second weekend.
‘Solo’ was expected to take in about US$30 million, analysts at Box Office Mojo said. STX Entertainment’s ‘Adrift’ collected US$11.5 million against a forecast of US$13 million and budget of US$35 million. Shailene Woodley and Sam Claflin play a couple who sail from Tahiti to San Diego and hit a catastrophic hurricane. The survival tale is based on a true story and scored 67 per cent positive reviews, according to aggregator Rotten Tomatoes.
R-rated ‘Upgrade’, which scored almost universal positive reviews, collected US$4.46 million, beating a forecast of US$2.8 million by Box Office Pro. The violent tale via Blumhouse Productions’ label BH Tilt, is about a billionaire inventor paralysed in a mugging, who tries an experimental cure to fix his body.
Daredevil Johnny Knoxville returns in the critically panned ‘Action Point’, via Paramount Pictures, which earned US$2.32 million -- about half the predicted US$5.5 million. In the US$19 million production, the ‘Jackass’ star is the owner of an out-ofcontrol amusement park where the rides are designed with minimum safety and maximum pain. — WP-Bloomberg