Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Pirates swabs deck with Baywatch
LOS ANGELES — In this battle on the high seas and the beach, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales overwhelmed Baywatch for Memorial Day weekend boxoffice victory.
The fifth installment in the Pirates franchise starring Johnny Depp, this time directed by Joachim Ronning and Espen Sandberg, took in an estimated $78 million at the domestic box office over the four-day weekend, with an estimated global opening of more than $300 million. The franchise total will soon pass $4 billion.
“Pirates is a huge spectacle film, the kind that audiences around the world have been drawn to, certainly international audiences have been drawn to,” said Dave Hollis, executive vice president of distribution for Disney. “We’re making films for a global audience.”
The weekend’s other big title was Paramount’s bigscreen adaptation of the television series Baywatch, starring Dwayne Johnson and Zac Efron and directed by Seth Gordon, which managed to make it only to No. 3 at the box
office. The film took in about $28 million from its Thursday opening.
In its fourth weekend of release, Disney’s Guardians of
the Galaxy Vol. 2 swiped the second place spot from Baywatch, bringing in about $27 million.
“The movie landscape has been littered with ’80s reboots and remakes that have had a very mixed response,” said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst at industry tracking firm ComScore, who
added that the relative silver lining for the Paramount picture’s lackluster opening is that “Baywatch is not the only film in May to not perform well.”
Rounding out the top five were Ridley Scott’s sci-fi actioner Alien: Covenant with $13.4 million, bringing its total to about $60 million, and Stella Meghie’s teen romantic drama Everything, Everything, with $7.7 million for a collective gross of $23 million.
The overall Memorial Day
weekend estimate of $176 million is the lowest since 1999. “This has been one of the toughest kickoff summer months ever,” Dergarabedian said. “The Memorial weekend sort of distills down what audiences thought of the May lineup.”
Rounding out the Top 10 were Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul with $6.1 million, Snatched with $5 million, King Arthur: Legend of the Sword with $4.3 million,
The Boss Baby with $2.5 million and Beauty and the Beast with $2 million.
Despite the lackluster totals, the industry can pin its hopes on a slate of promising releases this month, including
Wonder Woman, which opens
today; The Mummy; Cars 3; Transformers: The Last Knight; Baby Driver; and Despicable Me 3.
“The good news is we have seen many a summer start off really strong with incredible May performances, only to see the bottom drop out later in the summer. And there is a lot on the way,” Dergarabedian said. “You’re only as up or down as your last hit or failure, and I think for the industry, we just want to get May off the books and get into June.”