by Conan Simmons – August 16, 2021 – 7:54 pm
The latest Disney movie, ‘Free Guy’ starring Ryan Reynolds, was initially set up at 20th Century Fox prior to that long running studio being bought up and absorbed into the House of Mouse conglomerate. To no one’s surprise, ‘Free Guy’ managed to debut at number one at the box office over the weekend. Many box office analysists had estimated the comedy would take in just under or at $20 million. Ryan Reynolds’ star power was able to boost the actual earnings up to around $28 million.
As Hollywood trade journals and those “expert” analysists praise the perceived success of the film as a theater only release, $28 million is rather weak for a film budgeted at $125 million. Of course, those “experts” say it’s good for a film released during the pandemic. Only that overlooks the box office performance of other films released during the pandemic. ‘Black Widow’ was able to earn $80 million on opening weekend and ‘F9: The Fast Saga’ opened to $70 million. ‘Black Widow’ was, unlike ‘Free Guy’, also released to streaming day-and-date. As a theater only release ‘Free Guy’ still earned less than the day-and-date streaming release of Warner Bros. ‘Space Jam: A New Legacy’ which scored $31.1 million in theaters on its opening weekend.
As the cinema winter drags on causing big budget studio films to fail to make much of an impression in theaters, lower budgeted horror films are managing to buck the trend. Such is the case with this weekends new release ‘Don’t Breathe 2’ starring Stephen Lang. A sequel to the hit 2016 horror film many of those box office “experts” last week estimated the film to earn about $4 million going into the weekend. If you recall our last weekends box office roundup, we pointed out that ‘Don’t Breathe 2’ was likely to have a stronger than expected showing at the box office. Sure enough, the horror thriller took the second spot at theaters with a $10.6 million opening.
Disney did find easy passage with ‘Jungle Cruise’, starring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Emily Blunt, as the action-adventure came to port in third place at the box office just ahead of the Aretha Franklin biopic “Respect” starring Jennifer Hudson as the famed singer. Hudson is being positioned for an awards campaign as the studio hopes to see her earn an Oscar nomination.
Rounding out the Weekend Box Office Top 5 is James Gunn’s ‘The Suicide Squad’. Living up to its name, the film dropped a whopping 71% in its sophomore weekend. The availability of the movie streaming day-and-date on HBO Max is beyond a doubt the primary reason for the lackluster performance at the box office.
Four out of the top five biggest drop-offs in second weekend performance comes from films that debuted day-and-date on HBO Max. All five are streaming releases day-and-date. ‘The Suicide Squad’ may have the unfortunate position of dropping 71% but it’s only the third biggest drop during the pandemic era. Both ‘Godzilla vs. Kong’ and ‘Mortal Kombat’ dropped 72% in their sophomore weekends, both day-and-date releases on HBO Max. Prior to those films, ‘Wonder Woman 1984’ dropped 67% in the second weekend while being the first major film release to enter the day-and-date streaming controversy caused by Warner Bros. when the studio CEO, Jason Kilar, announced all films from the studio in 2021 will be streaming day-and-date on HBO Max. ‘Black Widow’, streaming day-and-date on Disney+ for a $30 surcharge, comes in just between the two DC comics adaptations with a second weekend drop of 68%.
It should also be noted that three of those five biggest box office drop-offs are comic book superhero movies. ‘The New Mutants’, after sitting on the studio shelf for three years, was finally released at the height of the pandemic last summer but it only dropped off the expected 59%, a percentage that’s a high average for most releases. With the three most recent superhero releases falling big time at the box office it looks like the long fabled “superhero fatigue” is finally setting in amongst audiences.
Will the next release for the genre fare better? ‘Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings’ will be a theater only release. Starring the mostly unknown Simu Liu, will the notable supporting actors, Awkwafina, Tony Leung and more be enough to get audiences to the cinemas? There is a lot of talk about concerns of both the Delta and Lambda variants of Covid-19 affecting box office earnings, couple that with the high rate of racism against Asian Americans in the past two years and the prospects for the latest Marvel adventure start looking more challenged than usual. Not to mention it is being released on Labor Day weekend which has long been the start of what Hollywood has dubbed “the summer dumping ground” for the fact that it is when movies the studios have less confidence in get released.
To make matters worse for Disney, the parent company of Marvel, releasing ‘Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings’ in theaters only contradicts their defense against Scarlett Johansson’s lawsuit claiming lost revenue for ‘Black Widow’ being released to streaming. Disney made a very public claim that Johansson was showing “callous disregard” for the pandemic. Yet, with a September release in theaters only for “Shang-Chi” it looks like Disney is showing disregard for the pandemic as other studios like Sony and Paramount have removed movies from September release dates. Sony recently moved their comic book movie ‘Venom: Let There Be Carnage’ to an October 15 release. Paramount has indefinitely delayed ‘Clifford the Big Red Dog’ after removing it from its publicized September release both in theaters and the upcoming Toronto Film Festival.
All eyes in Hollywood will be closely monitoring ‘Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings’ as Labor Day looms.
Weekend Box Office Top 5 (August 13-15, 2021)
- ‘Free Guy’ – $28.4 million – comedy (debut)
- ‘Don’t Breathe 2’ – $10.6 million – horror (debut)
- ‘Jungle Cruise’ – $9 million – adventure (drop $6.7 million, 43% down)
- ‘Respect’ – $8.8 million – biopic (debut)
- ‘The Suicide Squad’ – $7.8 million – action (drop $18.7 million, 71% down)
The total for the Weekend Box Office Top 5 comes to $64.6 million. This is an increase of $11.4 million, or 22%, over last weekends total of $53.2 million.