‘The Dark Tower’ leads slow weekend with US$19.5 mln
LOS ANGELES: As the dog days of summer drag on, a trio of wide releases are kicking off the August box office with a whimper.
The weekend’s leader is ‘ The Dark Tower’. Sony and MRC’s long-time- coming Stephen King adaptation starring Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey is landing on a modest US$ 19.5 million from 3,451 locations. Made for about US$ 66 million counting reshoots, the story centres on a boy ( played by Tom Taylor) who discovers another dimension where he aligns himself with a Gunslinger ( Elba) on a mission to save the world from various enemies, including the Man in Black ( McConaughey). Critics mostly panned the movie, leading to its current 18 per cent on Rotten Tomatoes.
Meanwhile, Annapurna’s ‘ Detroit’ is not faring as well as expected. Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal’s latest collaboration should end up with US$ 7.3 million from 3,007 locations this weekend. Combined with a week of limited release grosses, its total should stand at US$ 7.8 million. An awards- season push could end up helping its bottom line. So far, critics are on board, earning the tale of the Motor City’s 1967 riots a 96 per cent on Rotten Tomatoes. The movie is toplined by ‘Star Wars’ breakout John Boyega, as well as Will Poulter, and Algee Smith.
That leaves ‘ Kidnap’ -- from David Dinerstein’s recentlylaunched Aviron, and Lotus -- which is racing to US$ 10.2 million from 2,378 locations. The movie stars Halle Berry as a mother attempting to rescue her son after he is taken. Aviron acquired the film from a bankrupt Relativity, but the distributor declined to release the thriller’s acquisition cost, making it difficult to judge its performance.
‘ Dunkirk’, the box office winner the past two weekends, is sliding comfortably into second with US$ 17.6 million from 4,014 locations. Christopher Nolan’s World War II movie crossed the US$ 300 million mark on Saturday, and by the end of the weekend should tally a US$ 133.6 million domestic total. This weekend it looks to make about US$ 4 million from Imax screens alone, which will count for US$ 29.8 million of the movie’s domestic grosses. Warner Bros. also continues to see profits from ‘Wonder Woman’, which will land right up against the US$ 400 million domestic milestone by the end of this weekend.
In limited release, TWC’s ‘Wind River’ should make US$ 164,167 from four locations. The film stars Jeremy Renner and Elizabeth Olsen, and marks Taylor Sheridan’s directorial debut. Sheridan conceived the movie as part of a loose trilogy that also includes two recent releases that he wrote, but did not direct, ‘Sicario’ and ‘ Hell or High Water’.
All this on the calendar spot that last year’s ‘Suicide Squad’ bucked conventional release date wisdom with a recordbreaking US$ 133.7 million domestic opening. This summer has lagged overall due to a number of big-budget movies flopping or underperforming, and this latest showing will only put the business farther behind. — Reuters