What did you see or Smurf this weekend?

The weekend's biggest new film was Smurfs: The Lost Village... which probably says all you need to know about this mini Spring lull between blockbusters (another Fast & Furious is next).

Audiences weren't of one hive mind with people going to see a little of everything, though The Boss Baby and Beauty and the Beast still dominated as they did last weekend. Beauty and the Beast has been so dominant already that it will surely end the year as the second or third highest grosser. For comparisons sake, if you throw it back into last year's calendar, it would be #3 behind Rogue One and Finding Dory and ahead of Captain America: Civil War...

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Bossy Babies & Ghostly Shells at the Box Office

What did you see this weekend?

I caught the three top new titles and we'll share feelings about them over the next few days along with reactions to tonight's forthcoming Feud and Big Little Lies episodes. So much to talk about. It's going to be a big week at The Film Experience, so stay tuned and return often.

TOP WIDE
01 The Boss Baby $49 new
02 Beauty & The Beast $47.5 (cum. $395.4) Review
03 Ghost in the Shell $19 new
04 Power Rangers $14.5 (cum. $65)
05 Kong Skull Island $8.8 (cum. $147.8)  Review

TOP LIMITED 
01 The Zookeeper's Wife $3.3 new 541 screens
02 T2 Trainspotting $400K (cum. $1.1) 140 screens
03 The Devotion of Suspect X $330K new 43 screens
04 The Last Word $212K (cum. $1.4) 289 screens
05 Kedi $165K (cum. $2) 105 screens Review 
06 Personal Shopper $159K (cum. $791K) 150 screens Review

That's a good start for The Zookeeper's Wife which risked a nearly-wide opening despite not being "bankable" in the current ways (i.e. not being an animated comedy or franchise-oriented or effects driven). 

A lot of people online have been gleeful about Ghost in the Shell's lukewarm start (given the controversies over whitewashing Asian stories) but we're rarely gleeful about failure considering Hollywood often learns the wrong lessons from it. We would love casting to be more racially appropriate -- we've been shouting about giving Asian actors more roles forever here at TFE -- but we would also really love ambitious provocative sci-fi pictures and female-driven genre pictures to do well and knowing Hollywood they'll probably blame the failure on "too female" and "not enough action" rather than the more optimistic takeaway that the internet is pushing, i.e. "people want Asian leads in Asian stories"

What did you see this weekend?

Beauty & the Beast continues to be a cash machine for Disney Corp, already at nearly $700 million worldwide. Power Rangers fared the best of the new releases with a stronger than expected opening. Was that nostalgia driven or just people in the mood for campy schlock? My friends and I headed to the theater after a few drinks because we figured we shouldn't see it sober...

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Beauty and the Box Office. Plus Iron Fist.

What did you see this weekend besides Emma Watson twirling in that yellow gown?   Disney spent $160 million making the movie and probably another huge chunk of millions promoting it but they were rewarded with stacks and stacks of gold. It nearly became the top grossing movie of the year (thus far) in a single weekend! 

Since I'd already seen the Disney musical, I spent the weekend with a revisit of Grease 2 (more on that soon) as well as some DVR catch up (I will miss you when you're gone Real O'Neals - especially you Martha Plimpton and Matt Oberg). And yes I also tried with Iron Fist but it became white noise in the background as it was too dull to focus sole attention on. Identity politics aside, Finn Jones + the script are the biggest problems as there is so much filler and the hero is the least likeable character on the show, insufferably selfish and quite dumb. Shut up about your chi already, we get it! I found myself actually rooting for the douchey pseudo brother Ward Beachum (Tom Pelphrey). The Netflix series only comes alive when it focuses on side characters, whether they're good (Jessica Henwick as Colleen Wing), evil (Wai Ching Ho reprising her delicious Daredevil villain Madame Gao) or somewhere on the what-are-they-up-to spectrum (the always reliable David Wenham as Harold Meachum) 

TOP WIDE 
01 Beauty & The Beast $170 NEW Review
02 Kong Skull Island $28.8 (cum. $110.1)  Review
03 Logan $17.5 (cum. $184) Review
04 Get Out $13.2 (cum. $133.1) Review
05 The Shack $6.1 (cum. $42.6) 

TOP LIMITED 
01 The Sense of an Ending $475K (cum. $527K) 282 theaters Interview
02 Badrinath Ki Dulhania $420K (cum. $1.5) 156 theaters
03 A United Kingdom $320K (cum. $3.1) 257 theaters 
04 Kedi $275K (cum. $1.4) 120 theaters  Review 
05 The Last Word $191K (cum. $345K) 94 theaters
06 T2: Trainspotting $180K NEW 5 theaters
07 Personal Shopper $158K (cum. $269K) 35 theaters Review
08 The Salesman $105K (cum. $2.2) 72 theaters  Review, Interview 
09 Song to Song $53K NEW 4 theaters
10 Land of Mine $41K (cum. $245K) 38 theaters Interview

Was King Kong a Box Office Monster?

What did you see this weekend?

check out that monster-sized beard on KONG SKULL ISLAND director Jordan Vogt-Roberts!

After catching up on TV shows like Big Little Lies and Feud, I went to Kong: Skull Island with a friend. Afterwards I eagerly read Chris's review, nodding a long at most of it. It's an easy-sit with surprising charm (mostly by way of John C Reilly's ad libbing... he seriously saves the movie from its paint-by-numbers blockbuster strategy) but wow was it disposable. Will anyone remember anything about it in a year's time?

And this to build a whole franchise on? Not too many of my audience members stayed for the stinger after the credits but that it was an enjoyable visual tease of other iconic kaiju like Godzilla, Ghidra, and Mothra. While the film opened at #1 it seems likely that Warner Bros was looking for much bigger numbers to launch a whole franchise on. The last installment of Godzilla, for example, opened to over $90 million.  Perhaps by pairing them in Kong vs Godzilla (due in 2020) they can get closer to $100? Box Office charts for the weekend and some related news items are after the jump...

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