Fate holds lead as new films fizzle
LOS ANGELES — Five new movies arrived in wide release last weekend, and not one managed more than $5.1 million in ticket sales, giving Hollywood fresh evidence that U.S. moviegoing habits are changing rapidly.
The top five movies at the North American box office were all holdovers. The Fate of the Furious collected about $38.4 million, for a two-week worldwide total of $908.4 million. The Boss Baby was second, taking in about $12.7 million. Beauty and the Beast chugged along in third place, generating about $10 million in ticket sales.
All of those movies share a common DNA. They are glossy, big-budget extravaganzas stuffed with elements to hook global audiences: extreme stunts, Alec Baldwin as a talking infant, boundarypushing visual effects, song and dance.
On the other hand, the five new films vying for attention seemed shipped in from another era. They included a modestly budgeted, star-driven thriller; a nature documentary; and a period drama with romantic overtones. But consumers continued to send a message with their feet: These are the kinds of movies we now watch at home, either on streaming services like Netflix, HBO Go and Amazon Prime or through the vast on-demand platforms operated by cable and satellite providers.
Warner Bros., for instance, put forward the suspense film Unforgettable in 2,417 domestic theaters over the weekend, backing its release with tens of millions of dollars worth of billboards, television ads and posters at shopping malls — tried and true marketing tools that used to compel crowds into theaters. But Unforgettable only managed about $4.8 million in ticket sales. (Memo to studios: Perhaps retire the title Unforgettable. There have now been three films and a television series with that name over the last two decades. Can you identify one?)
The directorial debut of longtime producer Denise Di Novi cost only $12 million to make, but the meager result still disappointed.
“Unfortunately, the movie just missed the intended audience,” said Jeff Goldstein, Warner Bros.’ president of domestic distribution. “We had higher expectations, and we’re disappointed we didn’t achieve them.”
There is a silver lining for Warner Bros. The buddy comedy remake Going in Style, starring Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine and Alan Arkin, is chugging along after three weeks in theaters, taking fourth place with about $5 million.
The other weekend arrivals included The Promise, a period drama that cost nearly $100 million to make. It bombed at No. 9 with a catastrophic $4 million take, according to comScore, which compiles box office data.
The Promise touches on the mass killings of Armenians in Ottoman Turkey that many countries and most historians call genocide. Turkey still denies the genocide, saying the deaths stemmed from civil unrest and war.
The nature documentary Born in China had about $4.8 million in ticket sales. A lowbudget horror film, Phoenix Forgotten, took in about $2 million, while the art-house action picture Free Fire played to mostly empty theaters, generating about $994,000.