Patrick & Vera conjure up a big opening weekend
Sunday, June 12, 2016 at 9:00PM Don't be scared, Patrick. It's just money!
While The Conjuring 2 didn't quite equal its predecessor it came close which is saying a lot in this summer of underperforming sequels. It also helped that it's budget was only $40 million so it's already well on its way to profit. Contrast that to Warcraft's $160 million budget with a $24 million opening. Ouch. Still its foreign performance (nearing $300 million) should help it turn a profit. But one is reminded of The Golden Compass, another would be franchise that chose to end on a cliffhanger rather than telling a full story. Despite doing well overseas it never got a sequel. Maybe let your audience decide if they like your movie before ending with "to be continued..."?
None of the new limited releases did particularly well including our beloved The Fits which earned $16K in just 4 theaters. Even Love & Friendship & The Lobster appear to have peaked last weekend but we'll see if they can hold screens or expand again next week.
Expect a ton of the current movies to lose all oxygen next weekend when probable behemoth Finding Dory swims into town.
arrows indicate gaining or losing screens
TOP TEN WIDE
🔺01 The Conjuring 2 $40.3 NEW
🔺02 Warcraft $24.3 NEW
🔺03 Now You See Me 2 $23 NEW
▫️04 TMNT: Out of the Shadows $14.8 (cum. $61)
🔺05 X-Men Apocalypse $10 (cum. $136.3) ) Review, Podcast
🔻06 Me Before You $9.2 (cum. $36.8) Review
🔻07 Angry Birds $6.7 (cum. $98.1)
🔻08 Alice Through the Looking Glass $5.5 (cum. $62.4)
🔻09 Captain America: Civil War $4.3 (cum. $396.8) Review
🔻10 The Jungle Book $2.7 (cum. $352.6)
TOP TEN LIMITED
Under 1000 screens. Excluding previously wide.
🔺01 Love & Friendship $1.5 (cum. $9.5) Review, Podcast
▫️02 The Lobster $991K (cum. $5.1) Reviewish, Podcast
🔺03 Maggie's Plan $690K (cum. $1.1) Review
🔺04 Te3n $284K NEW
🔺05 Weiner $166K (cum. $760K) Review
🔻06 The Man Who Knew Infinity $161K (cum. $3.1)
🔻07 The Meddler $135K (cum. $3.9) Review
🔺08 The Wailing $133K (cum. $551K)
🔺09 Sing Street $69K (cum. $2.9) Review, Who's the MVP?, Podcast
🔻10 A Bigger Splash $60K (cum. $1.8) Reviewish, Podcast
WHAT DID YOU SEE THIS WEEKEND? I caught Warcraft (don't judge) and The Conjuring 2 (fun scares and Patrick sings!!!!!) and the Lupita Nyong'o Tony-nominated play Eclipsed (heartwrenching). Busy weekend.
Reader Comments (31)
I saw Apocalypse. A pretty unoriginal "meh" overall but a few fun/standout moments: Quicksilver's scene was even more glorious than its predecessor and Jean Gray's Phoenix moment was spectacular. I could never get over that horrible Mr. Freeze costume for poor Oscar Isaac though.
Already bought my Finding Dory ticket for next week. And a t-shirt. And a stuffed "Gerald" (because those teeth and eyebrows can only lead to good things). All in.
I kept going on my project of one movie of each year in sequence.
I saw:
Our hospitality
The Last Laugh
The Gold Rush
A Page of Madness
I am having a blast!
PW sings in CONJURING 2?? *teleports to theatre*
Is WARCRAFT worth my morbid/schadenfreude curiosity?
I saw The Conjuring and Now You See Me. Both of the originals were better than their sequels. And The Conjuring was overlong.
saw Hail Caesar ... a lesser Cohen movie.
Pet: Three masterpieces in one weekend? Jealous.
I saw three movies this weekend: Pee-Wee's Big Holiday, Mountains May Depart and Looking for Mr. Goodbar.
Pee-Wee was the best of the lot by far!
Stay strong, America. One day you will have modern common-sense gun laws.
Saw The nice guys, it was a blast, with Gosling a clear MVP! The scene with him trying to break a piece of glass was hysterical.
And then Conjuring 2...wasn´t a huge fan of the first one and this was just more of the same. Wan can direct well and create a mood but there´s nothing new in these movies - it all gets a bit boring after a while. The cheese factor was rather high this time as well, I mean Wilson singing is cute and all but WTF? The reason this franchise is doing so well is because it´s safe horror and it probably attracts a lot of religious folks as well-a lot of bible thumping!
The Nice Guys, which I started to enjoy mid-way through when I realized it was not about the story but more about nostalgia for the 70's. Ryan Gosling made me laugh and Russell Crowe has a rough, beaten down presence that works for the film. The young girl was quite good although I would not want my kid acting in a violent film.
I saw three films.
The Conjuring 2: LOVED this movie. I liked its length and thought the pacing was really good. And the Patrick Wilson singing scene was a delight. Also, I want to be the nun demon for Halloween.
Me Before You: Ugh. UGH. UGHHHHH. Fun drinking game: A shot every time they say the word "tea." Also, this feels like a British movie by people who have only learned about Britain from Downton.
Maggie's Plan: Kind of a hot mess and all over the place. Then again, Greta Gerwig and Julianne Moore are a delight.
Catching up on Orphan Black Season 4 and nail biting my way through the Tony Awards (watching live in an hour and a half). No time for anything else...
I saw JAMES WHITE - amazing. There were tears. I was very impressed with the performances and the way my perceptions of James as a character would shift from scene to scene, and sometimes within a scene.
Xavier Dolan's IT'S ONLY THE END OF THE WORLD at the Sydney Film Fest. I really wanted to like this, but I gave up about halfway through. The reviews out of Cannes were right: it's a lot of obnoxious people shouting at each other in close-up, to little purpose. MVP is Marion Cotillard as the mousy sister-in-law. Girl can do anything and without de-glamming or changing her appearance (LA VIE EN ROSE is such an anomaly in her filmography in that respect).
ZOOLANDER 2 on VOD - meh. Some fun cameos but way too long and overblown.
This morning I'm off to see THE MAN WHO KNEW INFINITY, which has become a real sleeper hit in Sydney.
And I started reading THE LIGHT BETWEEN OCEANS, which is terrific so far. Fassy and Vikander seem perfectly cast, so far (their difference in age is true to the characters in the book).
I saw The Little Foxes My God Patricia Collinge in it.The Witch left me disappointed but impressed.
AR: I am watching cronologically a movie form each year since 1917 to 2016
To finish my day I'll watch Metropolis!
It's wonderful!
mark -- wasn't she amazing!?
On a night off from tennis camp in Saugerties, NY, I went to the quirky Orpheum Theatre and saw The Meddler. Hands down the single worst title for a movie in a long time. But it was surprisingly good.
I watched:
Veronika Voss - So stylistic and enjoyable.
The Harvey Girls - This is something I would have watched as a kid. I love Virginia O'Brien. Her stone-faced singing makes me really happy.
I saw " Warcraft" that for a movie based on a video game it's pretty good- the plot is Tolkien light but it's a well produced spectacle with a handsome cast, colorful costumes and surprisingly human CGI creatures ( specially an adorable baby Orc) The movie lacks the camps of "Gods of Egypt" but its a lot more fun than " The Huntsman:Frozen". ( I'm not sure but does Glenn Close have an audio cameo)
jaragon - I'm pretty sure that was Glenn Close in the flesh.
I finally saw 10 Cloverfield Lane. John Goodman is fantastic in that.
Francofonia, The Duke of Burgundy, Locke, Frozen, Killing Them Softly and Nostalgia for the Light.
"Born To Dance" - I didn't really know Eleanor Powell before, but wow she's a talent. Lots of kooky character actors around the edges of this one (Buddy Ebsen!), completely frivolous but consistently excellent.
"Big Stone Gap" - I expected a train wreck and more or less got one; fun to gawk at the improbably starry cast, but the story herks and jerks and skips and jumps and makes no sense at all.
"Terrorvision" - Lame, but spectacularly tacky set design and impressive creature effects for its budget.
...that's a weird line-up.
The Tony Awards: "Glenn Close in the flesh."
I liked The Conjuring 2 more than the original, tbh.
She was fantastic.
My sympathy to all affected by the recent Florida shooting.
@ Dave S. - Complete agree about Born to Dance. It is so silly fun!
I watched The Goodbye Girl (I didn't like it, but I really do not care for Richard Dreyfuss - he always seems smug to me) and rewatched Julia (which I do like - I actually thought a lot more of Fonda's performance this time). I'm also enjoying Call the Midwife on Netflix, it's like tv comfort food. I'm hoping to catch Maggie's Plan sometime after work this week.
Mike in Canada - I'm not so optimistic. Every time another mass shooting happens I think about Columbine, when I was dating a guy from your country who asked me (sincerely) to explain our gun culture to him. I couldn't. And our laws have only gotten worse since then.
Suzanne: That Oscar was ALWAYS more about Close Encounters (maybe the only time where he wasn't some flavour of smug), the Academy just didn't want to officially admit it.
Suzanne
If you didn't like The Goodbye Girl, try The More The Merrier.
It's also about a sublet apartment and you change
Richard Dreyfuss and Marsha Mason for Joel McCrea and Jean Arthur.
The two movies and actresses are some of my favourites.
The More The Merrier is very funny,
with the classic sequence on the stairs.
Won the supporting actor Oscar and lost best picture
to Casablanca.
@ Kimberly S ... I love The More The Merrier. And you are so right ... it is superior to The Goodbye Girl.
@Suzanne ... Richard Dreyfus does always seem so smug. He's a capital A actor in the worst way possible.
I saw X-Men: Apocalypse, and enjoyed it much more than I was expecting, especially since I REALLY didn't care for Captain American Civil War. Not that Apocalypse was any great shakes, but it was mostly fun and I enjoyed it, which is a whole lot more than I can say for anything in the official MCU of late.
Dave S. - Eleanor Powell is THE. BEST. Fred Astaire, of all people, was scared of dancing with her because she was so good. I adore her and Born to Dance is a hoot!
I also have discovered Eleanor Powell thanks to TCM. Two movies you HAVE to see are Broadway Melody of 1936, her two big numbers - You Are My Shining Star & Broadway Rhythm - are terrific, and she's not even in the fantastic Oscar-winning number "I've Got a Feelin' You're Foolin' - and check out Buddy Ebsen - what a dancer!
Another must-see is Honolulu with a wonderful number for Gracie Allen and a lot of celebrity lookalikes, the Marx Brothers are especially fun, and Eleanor does a really wild Hawaiian War Dance at the end that always knocks me out!