Where it begins, June 2019

As I warned you before, we’ve got two Exhibitiongeddon tm weekends this summer, this weekend is the first one and we’ve got one more in about a month. What will make this weekend a little tougher is how good this weekend was last year, with The Incredibles 2 opening, so we’ll only be grossing about 50% of the $270 million we grossed for the same weekend last year. So with the expected accuracy of a word cloud, here’s my best take on the weekend box-office.

#1 Men in Black International - As you’ve probably heard already, this film isn’t quite what most of the business thought it was going to be, and there will be a few people this weekend asking ‘what happened?’. But just like many films these days, there was a lot of things that were right about this film, but way too many things went wrong or were miscalculated. On the good side, the campaign was what you would normally see out of a studio like Sony; and from what the critics are saying the two new leads, Chris Hemsworth and Tessa Thompson deliver solid work from an acting standpoint. However, neither actor has developed a long enough resume (outside of roles where the IP is what’s putting the buts in the seats) to carry a film on their own. In contrast, you could look at how Detective Pikachu used Ryan Reynolds (who has developed enough of a fanbase to bring something to the equation) effectively at the box-office. Also, due to our entertainment overlords at Disney moving the bar forward when it comes to sequels by making each sequel another chapter in the story, instead of an exercise in cut and paste; films that….well….feel like they just cut and pasted the story from a previous film face backlash from the moviegoing public. So the bottom line is when you bring in a new cast, but don’t give any reason for the old cast being gone, and then put them in a story that feels like we’ve been there before; it’s really tough to get moviegoers (outside of the hardcore fans of the IP) to buy in. All that being said, they are on Father’s Day weekend so they should get a little lift out of that, and they should end up in the mid 20’s.

#2 The Secret Life of Pets 2 - Looks pretty typical for a 2nd weekend, figure its down 50% from last weekend for a gross in the low 20’s.

#3/#4 Dark Phoenix / Aladdin - Dark Phoenix looks way below the typical 2nd weekend, Aladdin is holding really nicely. Figure they’re both in the low teens.

#5/#6 Shaft / Rocketman - With Shaft, as one of the great philosophers of our time David St. Hubbins said, ‘There’s a fine line between clever and stupid’. With Shaft, the idea was to bring some TV writers to give it some attitude and fun, but it seems to have ended up a little ‘campy’. The problem with ‘campy’ is you’re pretty much telling an audience ‘you’ll love it because it sucks’, and all they hear is ‘it sucks’. As far as Rocketman it’s still a little below the % Bohemian Rhapsody was at in the corresponding weekend. Figure they both end up in the 8-9 range.

Late Night - Amazon’s Sundance pickup went wide this weekend and it looks okay, figure about 5 or 6 for the weekend.

Dead Don’t Die - Jim Jarmusch’s all star zombie mashup went semi wide (600 runs) and looks way better in the art houses than the suburban commercial theaters. Figure about $3 million for the weekend.