by Conan Simmons – August 2, 2021 – 7:07 am
Let’s call it like it is. ‘Jungle Cruise’, the action-adventure starring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Emily Blunt, may be number one at the box office with $34.2 million but it won’t be making a profit on its $200 million dollar budget and, as in the time before the pandemic hit, that makes ‘Jungle Cruise’ a bomb at the box office.
Now, normally, I would be the first one to say “It’s number one at the box office! How can it be a bomb?” While I still agree with the sentiment that the movie is enjoying some degree of success, I feel I must break from that here in order to clarify what many film analysts and critics are being very reluctant to say this weekend. From Variety to Deadline Hollywood to The Hollywood Reporter and beyond, no one is claiming the box office for ‘Jungle Cruise’ is any better than “lackluster”. Everyone in Hollywood knows where this movie stands in terms of profitability. Even if it does get to open in China it will be a hard struggle to break even, especially as Hollywood movies have not been enjoying much that could be considered success at the box office of the Middle Kingdom in the last couple of years.
Of course, people will say “but the pandemic” only that didn’t stop ‘F9: The Fast Saga’ debuting to $70 million or ‘Black Widow’ debuting with $80 million. Clearly, day-and-date streaming is taking a toll on theatrical box office around the country.
Case in point, ‘Black Widow’ star Scarlett Johansson has filed suit against Disney alleging that the company forced Marvel Studios to break her contractual agreement that ‘Black Widow’ would receive an “exclusive theatrical release” and that by breaking that agreement and having the film debut day-and-date streaming on Disney+ it prevented the company from having to pay out the previously agreed to deferred payments tied closely to the films box office performance and subsequent rolling out on ancillary media, including video sales/rentals, cable/broadcast tv, and streaming.
‘Black Widow’ is in fourth place at the box office this weekend with $6.4 million. No word from Disney on how much it made streaming. Disney only announced the opening weekend streaming numbers which they claimed was $60 million. They haven’t made any claims since, at least, not on that film.
Disney did disclose that ‘Jungle Cruise’ made $30 million streaming on Disney+. As we’ve pointed out in previous articles, that number does get divided up amongst other entities. Disney has admitted that around 15% of that number is paid to Roku and other streaming providers.
Disney has been trying to deflect the harm streaming causes to box office receipts by blaming online piracy. Piracy of movies is nothing new, even predating the widespread adoption of the internet, most notably with the Miami-Dade Blue Bust in 1980 which was supposed to stop pornography only most of the bootleg VHS tapes found were of the 1979 Oscar winning film for Best Picture, ‘Kramer vs. Kramer’, starring Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep.
Disney’s argument against online piracy is undermined by their subtle bragging that ‘Black Widow’ is the number one most downloaded movie on torrent sites that cater to that so-called “criminal” element.
The exciting thing at the box office this weekend was the battle for second place as the Arthurian fantasy adventure starring Dev Patel, ‘The Green Knight’, just beats M. Night Shyamalan’s horror film, ‘Old’, for second spot on the Weekend Box Office Top 5 by a few tens of thousands of dollars. I suspected ‘The Green Knight’ would perform well (you did read last weekend’s box office report, didn’t you?) and I even made the claim that ‘The Green Knight’ would surpass the analysts’ estimates of a $4 million debut by earning more than than and taking second place. The film earned $6.8 million coming in just ahead of ‘Old’. Of course, I was emboldened to make such a prediction after the results of a poll I ran on social media last week where movie-goers indicated they were more likely to see ‘The Green Knight’ in theaters over ‘Jungle Cruise’. You can follow ON GENRE over on Twitter (where I ran the poll) @genre_on, as well as on Instagram @on_genre_movies and Facebook.
Rounding out the Weekend Box Office Top 5 is a film that did indeed live up to its name. ‘Stillwater’, starring Matt Damon has been causing lots of controversy over the weekend including Matt Damon revealing in an interview with The Sunday Times that he only stopped using the word “faggot” a few months ago after his daughter told him it was bad. The other controversy is coming from the criticism of Amanda Knox, the American who was convicted of murdering her roommate in Italy only to have the conviction overturned years later, years Amanda Knox spent in prison, when police were faced with the corruption of their actions which allowed for the real killer to run free. ‘Stillwater’ is not-so-loosely based on her experience, the plot of the film following Damon’s Trump supporting character to France where his daughter is in prison on charges of killing her roommate/girlfriend. The plot has been cited in many publications as being based on “the sordid Amanda Knox case”, to which the real Amanda Knox has been very vocal in her displeasure with how the film fictionalizes what happened to her. Don’t be surprised if a lawsuit pops up around this film.
WEEKEND BOX OFFICE TOP 5 (July 30 – August 1, 2021)
- ‘Jungle Cruise’ – $34.2 million – action-adventure (debut)
- ‘The Green Knight’ – $6.8 million – fantasy (debut)
- ‘Old’ – $6.8 million – horror (drop $9.7 million, 59% down)
- ‘Black Widow’ – $6.4 million – action (drop $5.2 million, 45% down)
- ‘Stillwater’ – $5.1 million – drama (debut)
Total for the Weekend Box Office Top 5 comes to $59.3 million. This is a small 6% increase for a gain of $3.5 million over last weekends total of $55.8 million.
Next weekend will be won by the James Gunn directed superhero war film, ‘The Suicide Squad’. But will the superhero genre continue to have legs?
The weekend after that, starting on Friday the 13th, will see theatrical only releases ‘Free Guy’, ‘Respect’ and ‘Don’t Breathe 2’ rush the box office to topple ‘The Suicide Squad’ from the top spot. After that there probably won’t be much competition until the September 10 release of Marvel’s ‘Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings’. Will the Marvel film be a winner or will it be affected by the rising concerns over the Delta variant of Covid-19 which has already caused Paramount to pull their family film, ‘Clifford the Big Red Dog’, from its September 17 release date. That film currently sits unscheduled.