by Conan Simmons – May 11, 2021 – 7:59 pm
The Weekend Box Office Top 5 saw a very modest decline of only 5% from Friday to Sunday. The debut of Guy Ritchie’s fourth collaboration with Jason Statham, ‘Wrath of Man’, a remake of the 2004 French film ‘Cash Truck’ took the number one spot over the weekend.
‘Wrath of Man’ was the only film to debut in the Weekend Box Office Top 5 which was rounded out by recent holdovers ‘Demon Slayer’ the animated hit from Japan which topped the box office on the previous weekend, two fantasy films of the tokusatsu variety ‘Mortal Kombat’ and ‘Godzilla vs. Kong’, and finally the only film to make gains this weekend the Disney animated hit ‘Raya and the Last Dragon’, holding onto the Weekend Box Office Top 5 for 10 weekends.
It was the weekend that had been set for Marvel’s ‘Black Widow’ before Marvel moved its release date into July 9 and set a day-and-date release on Disney+ for an additional $30 charge. The streaming decision is a first for any film in the long running Marvel Cinematic Universe, or MCU, which officially began with 2008’s ‘Iron Man’ (unofficially, it could be argued it began with 2003’s Ang Lee directed ‘Hulk’ which setup 2008’s ‘The Incredible Hulk’, the 2003 film was executive produced by Marvel President Kevin Feige. But then again, Kevin Feige has generally had a producing credit on almost every Marvel Comics film adaptation starting with 2000’s ‘X-Men’, so perhaps they all have been connected the entire time?).
Even though Hollywood movie studios continue to release films day-and-date on their respective streaming services there are signs that streaming will not overtake movie theaters the way many think. HBO Max, which caused controversy within the film industry with their decision to release all of their 2021 slate day-and-date on streaming, has recently announced plans to offer an ad-supported version of HBO Max for a customer charge of $9.99 a month, suggesting the company is having more trouble than they anticipated in trying to turn a profit with the streaming service. The current ad-free version of HBO Max charges customers $14.99 a month.
For another sign that U.S. audiences are favoring animated films the current top 5 domestic box office moneymakers of 2021 include 3 animated films and 2 tokusatsu fantasy films, with ‘Godzilla vs. Kong’ ($92.1 million) being the titan amongst the moneymakers followed by ‘Tom and Jerry’ ($44.6 million), ‘Raya and the Last Dragon’ ($44 million), ‘Mortal Kombat’ ($33.3 million) and ‘Demon Slayer’ ($31.9 million).
WEEKEND BOX OFFICE TOP 5 (May 7-9, 2021)
- ‘Wrath of Man’ – $8.3 million – action (debut)
- ‘Demon Slayer’ – $3.1 million – animated (drop $3.3 million, 52% decline)
- ‘Mortal Kombat’ – $2.4 million – fantasy (drop $3.8 million, 61% decline)
- ‘Godzilla vs. Kong’ – $2 million – fantasy (drop $800k, 29% decline)
- ‘Raya and the Last Dragon’ – $1.9 million – animated (gain $500k, 36% increase)
Total for the Weekend Box Office Top 5 is $17.7 million. A small decrease of 5% for a $900k drop from last weekend’s total of $18.6 million.