by Conan Simmons – September 20, 2021 – 5:45 am
Marvel continues their box office reign as theatrical only release ‘Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings’ easily stays on top for a third consecutive weekend with no sign of being toppled anytime this month. Next weekend will see the wide release of musical ‘Dear Evan Hanson’ but it’s very unlikely to usurp the Master of Kung Fu.
The weekend did see the debut of Clint Eastwood’s latest western ‘Cry Macho’, which was released day-and-date streaming on HBO Max. The film broke into the Weekend Box Office Top 5 in spite of that earning just enough to come in third behind the comedy ‘Free Guy’ starring Ryan Reynolds and Jodie Comer. ‘Cry Macho’ did better than I expected but many box office analysts thought it would do better and are now calling the films debut a “disappointment”.
What is a disappointment is my far off the mark estimate for Gerard Butler’s action flick ‘Copshop’. If you recall last week I estimated the film to make around the $20 million mark as theaters were showing signs of life after lockdown. Unfortunately, audiences were none to eager for anything without a superhero of sorts and ‘Copshop’ came in just outside of the Weekend Box Office Top 5 where it made just over $2 million.
One other new release did even less business at the box office.
‘The Eyes of Tammy Faye’ fell much further than anyone’s estimates with just over $600k for the weekend. The film stars Jessica Chastain and Andrew Garfield in what is considered to be award contending performances. Will the poor box office hurt their chances? Probably not.
Horror films ‘Candyman’, starring Tony Todd, and ‘Malignant’ round out the Weekend Box Office Top 5 as the horror genre proves consistently reliable. If you’ve been reading On Genre for any length of time you know from our Weekend Box Office Top 5 that horror films are almost as consistent as animated films in the past year, they may not always hit the big numbers but they sure hang in there for a while.
WEEKEND BOX OFFICE TOP 5 (September 17-19, 2021)
- ‘Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings’ – $21.7 million – fantasy (drop $14.1 million, 39% decline)
- ‘Free Guy’ – $5.2 million – comedy (drop $600k, 10% decline)
- ‘Cry Macho’ – $4.5 million – western (debut)
- ‘Candyman’ – $3.5 million – horror (drop $1.3 million, 27% decline)
- ‘Malignant’ – $2.7 million – horror (drop $2.9 million, 52% decline)
Total for the Weekend Box Office Top 5 is $37.6 million. This is a decline of 31% for a drop of $16.9 million down from last weekends total of $54.5 million.
‘Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings’, starring Simu Liu and Awkwafina, is expected to hold the number one spot for the remainder of September. It will be somewhat ironic when a movie about a super-villain from Marvel comic books topples the superhero flick from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. On October 1, ‘Venom: Let There Be Carnage’ will hit screens and take the number one spot. The sequel stars Tom Hardy as the anti-hero going up against Woody Harrelson as Carnage. Both characters are from the rogues gallery of Spider-Man.