Since this weekend's box office was all over the place we have an expanded list today. We're taking all wide releases into account and the corresponding top 12 in limited release.
Weekend Box Office
June 14th-16th (Actuals)
🔺 = new or expanded theater counts / ★ = recommended |
W I D E
|
PLATFORM / LIMITED
|
 |
 |
1 🔺 Men in Black Int'l $30 on 4224 screens *new* REVIEW
|
1 🔺 The Dead Don't Die $2.5 on 613 screens *new* REVIEW, JARMUSCH |
 |
 |
2 Secret Life of Pets $24.4 on 4563 screens (cum. $92.6) REVIEW
|
2 🔺 Last Black Man in San Francisco $380k on 36 screens (cum. $733k) REVIEW ★ |
 |
 |
3 Aladdin $17.3 on 3556 screens (cum. $264) REVIEW, 1992 RETRO
|
3 Bharat $377k on 202 screens (cum. 2.6) |
 |
 |
4 Rocketman $9.4 on 3021 screens (cum. $66.7) REVIEW, PODCAST ★
|
4 Biggest Little Farm [DOC] $225k on 176 screens (cum. $2.9) |
 |
 |
5 Dark Phoenix $9.3 on 3721 screens (cum. $52.1) REVIEW
|
5 🔺 Pavarotti [DOC] $221k on 48 screens (cum. $450k) |
 |
 |
6 🔺 Shaft $8.9 on 2952 screens *new*
|
6 Echo in the Canyon [DOC] $206k on 68 screens (cum. $805k) |
 |
 |
7 Godzilla: King of Monsters $8.7 on 3207 screens (cum. $94.3)
|
7 🔺 American Woman $110k on 117 screens *new* |
 |
 |
9 🔺 Late Night $5.2 on 2220 screens (cum. $5.5) REVIEW ★
|
9 🔺 A Brother's Love $83k on 17 screens (cum. $212k) |
 |
 |
10 Avengers Endgame $3.7 on 1450 screens (cum. $830.7) REVIEW
|
10 The Souvenir $55k on 83 screens (cum. $841k) REVIEW, PODCAST ★
|
 |
 |
11 Ma $3.7 on 1794 screens (cum. $40.4) REVIEW
|
11 🔺 5B [DOC] $40k on 127 screens *new*
|
 |
 |
12 Detective Pikachu $1.2 on 984 screens (cum. $140.8) REVIEW
|
12 🔺 Clinton Road $38k on 10 screens *new*
|
numbers on that chart are pulled from boxofficemojo.
WIDE
Men in Black International and Shaft continued the 2019 trend of franchise offerings opening much softer than their predecessors. MCU blockbusters aside, are audiences now exhausted by familiar franchises, or is it simply that the supply is just too much greater than the demand given that every weekend brings a sequel. They're less "event" movies now than par for the course. This audience shrug might spell good news for Hollywood's creative output but for the fact that the original films are still not packing houses as counterprogramming. Late Night, for example, which is very funny, only opened to $5.2 million after going wide. 20 years ago, or even 10 really, it would have been at least a modest hit.
LIMITED
The Dead Don't Die went nearly wide in its first weekend, the widest, in fact ever, for a Jarmusch movie on opening weekend to solid results with a $4k per screen average. The other fairly wide 'limited' title was American Woman which didn't win audience favor despite 100+ screens. Perhaps it was the lack of advertising or the hard to market subject (the trailer is quite misleading, all told, as the film is far more of a family drama / character study than a murder mystery but it's very well acted). In terms of PSA's the champ is still basically Last Black Man in San Francisco which added 2 dozens theaters for its second weekend.
I was all excited to see the box office results for the second weekend of The Gangster The Cop and The Devil which I saw on a whim with a date last weekend (his choice) but here we run into the very confusing world of foreign language specific distribution companies. Though the South Korean movie got respectful reviews and did decent business last weekend with a $78k gross from 21 screens it seems to have vanished entirely from the theatrical landscape 7 days later since there are no box office results for it and it doesn't show up on ticket purchase sites either. Strange. That's too bad because it's a twisty fun sit and I thought it might have good word-of-mouth for a second weekend. This happens to a lot of Bollywood and Chinese movies, too -- no matter how well they do in week one. Perhaps its from supply vs demand? For whatever reason India, China, and South Korea are the three countries which dominate the foreign language theatrical market these days (in terms of number of titles released). We assume their solid box office numbers, even for short runs, comes from loyal immigrant audiences since they rarely get anything like robust media coverage the way European films sometimes do.
Another casualty of the impossibly tough marketplace for non-franchise titles was the documentary 5B which Julianne Moore has been helping to promote. Despite being a Gay Pride month ready doc about the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the 1980s co-directed by an Oscar winner (Paul Haggis) it had a truly dire per screen average of just $315.
Article originally appeared on The Film Experience (http://thefilmexperience.net/).
See website for complete article licensing information.
