Maxance Vincent
This week was ripe with newly-released theatrical exclusive films, with the biggest winner being Disney’s remake of The Little Mermaid. While the film received mixed reviews among critics, Disney remakes have (mostly) been critic-proof, and the movie made $95.5 million during the weekend. It will be on track to make over $120 million over the four-day Memorial Day weekend. If this happens, it will be in the top three highest-grossing Memorial Day releases of all time!
We’ll see how much it drops for the second weekend, but the movie could end up being the second 2023 release to hit the $1 billion mark. It’s doing well internationally, grossing over $68.3 million with a total global cume of $163.8 million. Not a bad start, to say the least.
The weekend also saw a number of mid-budget comedies and action movies balancing out the tentpole release, with the Brett Kreischer starring action-comedy The Machine being the most successful of the bunch. Despite negative reviews, the movie accumulated $4.9 million over the weekend, albeit falling way short of its $20 million price tag!
About My Father was an even bigger commercial dud, making only $4.3 million over a more considerable $29.1 million budget. The movie had the star power of Robert De Niro to carry its commercial legs, but his comedy streak has not been very good, having recently starred in Dirty Grandpa, which was a massive critical failure. And since his latest comedy isn’t receiving glowing reviews, the audience wasn’t up to the task for another disappointment.
It wasn’t a great weekend for Gerard Butler, with his latest collaboration with Ric Roman Waugh in Kandahar failing to impress critics and audiences. Now that the film currently holds a 47% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, more than 70% of Butler’s filmography contains a rotten score! Yikes…It wasn’t a hit amongst moviegoers, grossing only $2.4 million in over 2,100 theatres, with an estimated budget of $70 million! That’s not good.
On the flip side, Nicole Holofcener‘s You Hurt My Feelings has made over $1.3 million in 912 theatres, making it a positive side that its tally will be bigger when the film expands in more theatres next week. Independent films seem harder to track in a post-COVID moviegoing era, but A24 has always had theatrical hits with smart social marketing campaigns and strong festival debuts. This was a case of the latter, premiering at Sundance with rave reviews and garnering audience anticipation when it has released.
Here’s the complete list of the top ten films of the week:
- The Little Mermaid (Disney): $95.5M – 4,320 theatres
- Fast X (Universal): $23.0M (-65.7%) – 4,088 theatres
- Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 3 (Disney): $19.9M (-38.4%) – 3,940 theatres
- The Super Mario Bros. Movie (Universal): $6.2M (-34.7%) – 3,148 theatres
- The Machine (Sony): $4.9M – 2,409 theatres
- About My Father (Lionsgate): $4.2M – 2,464 theatres
- Kandahar (Open Road Films): $2.4M – 2,105 theatres
- You Hurt My Feelings (A24): $1.3M – 912 theatres
- Evil Dead Rise (Warner Bros): $1.0M (-56.5%) – 921 theatres
- Book Club: The Next Chapter (Universal): $920.000 (-69.3%) – 1,339 theatres
Source: Box Office Mojo
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