Cruise denies Pooh a honey pot
NEW YORK — Winniethe-Pooh and Christopher Robin couldn’t catch up to Tom Cruise and Mission: Impossible — Fallout at the box office, as Cruise’s sixth, stuntfilled Mission movie topped the charts for the second week.
Paramount Pictures’ Fallout brought in $35.3 million to bring its two-week total to $124.8 million, according to final figures Monday. That was enough to easily outpace Disney’s Christopher Robin, which debuted with about $24.6 million in ticket sales. Made for an estimated $75 million, Marc Forster’s live-action Winniethe-Pooh revival stars Ewan McGregor as a grown-up Christopher Robin reunited with the beloved characters of the Hundred Acre Wood.
Christopher Robin may have a hard time making up the slack overseas. China, which restricts the number of U.S. movies that play in its theaters, declined to give the film a release date. Chinese authorities, per usual, did not give a reason. (Maybe Disney has already received its share of slots? Maybe regulators thought the movie was too twee? Maybe there is still sensitivity about President Xi Jinping being compared to Pooh? All of the above?)
Rival studios were eager to position Christopher Robin as a misfire for Disney, which has achieved runaway success at the box office over the last three years. Among the six biggest film studios, Disney currently ranks No. 1 in terms of domestic market share for 2018, with 35 percent. The next closest studio is Universal, with 14 percent.
Truth be told, Christopher Robin can lose money and still be considered a success inside Disney. If nothing else, the film raised the profile of the 92-year-old Pooh, who still generates more than $1 billion in merchandise sales annually for Disney. Christopher Robin also represents an improvement from Disney’s previous attempt at big-screen glory for the befuddled bear: Winnie the Pooh took in only $27 million over its entire run in 2011. (It only cost about $30 million to make, however.)
The R-rated action-comedy The Spy Who Dumped Me, starring Mila Kunis and Kate McKinnon, debuted in third with $12.1 million for Lionsgate.
Universal’s Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again, now in its third weekend, added $9 million in ticket sales for about $91.3 million total.
Rounding out the top five, Columbia’s The Equalizer 2, also in its third weekend, earned $8.8 million for a total of $79.9 million.
The final new wide release of the weekend, 20th Century Fox’s The Darkest Minds, debuted at No. 8 with $5.8 million.
A dystopian sci-fi adventure about teenagers with newfound abilities, the film was expected to clear less than $10 million, according to projections. It earned a B rating on CinemaScore and an 18 percent rotten rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
In limited release, conservative filmmaker and provocateur Dinesh D’Souza’s documentary Death of a Nation, distributed by Quality Flix, earned $2.3 million across 1,005 theaters.