Boss Baby gives Smurfs the blues
LOS ANGELES — Luckily, the box-office beating The Boss Baby and Beauty and the Beast put on Columbia’s new release Smurfs: The Lost Village couldn’t make the animated gnomes any more blue.
The Alec Baldwin-voiced baby with a briefcase took the No. 1 spot for the second week in a row with an estimated $26.4 million in U.S. and Canadian theaters, beating analyst expectations of $25 million. Sufficient buzz and the benefit of Baldwin’s popular portrayal of President Donald Trump on Saturday Night Live likely helped the film succeed, said Paul Dergarabedian, ComScore’s senior media analyst.
Disney’s Beast came in second with about $24 million in its third weekend.
Performing the best of the new releases was Smurfs: The Lost Village, with about $13 million, good for third place. Analysts projected less than $20 million.
“I think it’s within the realm of where we were hoping to be,” said Rory Bruer, Columbia’s distribution chief.
Columbia Pictures returned to its Smurfs franchise, this time with an all-animated version (the first two movies combined computer graphics and live action). In a feminist turn for The Lost Village, the Smurf gang meets an all-female tribe led by SmurfWillow, voiced by Julia Roberts.
While Smurfs did receive an A CinemaScore from moviegoers, it got only a 39 percent positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
“But the fate of the third Smurfs is not necessarily sealed,” Dergarabedian said.
“There are other revenue streams for films like this,” Dergarabedian said, noting international profits and home video potential that could recoup production costs.
The second-best performing new release was Warner Bros., New Line Cinema and Village Roadshow’s Going in Style with about $12 million.
A remake of the 1979 heist film of the same name, the film stars Alan Arkin, Morgan Freeman and Michael Caine as geriatric friends who turn to criminal activity when they fall on hard times. The $24 million movie was directed by Zach Braff, best known for the 2004 indie hit Garden State and the TV show Scrubs.
While the picture received an average B-plus CinemaScore, it nabbed an A-minus from moviegoers over 50, or 72 percent of the total audience. Critics were less pleased; the comedy has a 43 percent positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
In fifth place was Paramount’s Ghost in the Shell with about $7.3 million in its second week. The fantastical tale, which was at the center of a “whitewashing” controversy for its casting of Scarlett Johansson, has pulled about $31.5 million to date.
The final major new release, Pure Flix’s The Case for Christ, garnered about $4 million. Analysts projected a less than $10 million take.
In limited release, the Chris Evans drama Gifted took in about $446,000 from 56 theaters, while the World War II drama Their Finest grossed $77,000 from four screens in New York and Los Angeles.
The relative quiet at the box office is ending soon. The Fate of the Furious, the eighth installment in The Fast and the Furious franchise, speeds into theaters this weekend, followed by Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 a few weeks later.
There are a lot of boxoffice heavyweights looming on the horizon, Dergarabedian said.