Box Office Report for the Week of May 5

The summer movie season has officially begun…with a whimper. While the movie received positive reviews coming out of its SXSW premiere and subsequent screenings, David Leitch‘s The Fall Guy did not hit in the way Universal would’ve hoped when mounting this massive anticipation tour, from a SXSW to a CinemaCon screening, in the hopes to excite audiences enough to see the film in a cinema.

The movie opened with a meager $28 million domestic tally and a $65 million global cume on a budget of over $120 million. That’s not good, and many pundits were quick to blame one or another film that contributed to its failure. While some of its arguments will hold merit, the film did not perform as well as it did, mainly due to its uneven marketing campaign and two abysmal trailers that played before every single movie since November last year.

While the movie is far better than those two trailers make it out to be, the fact that its second trailer is almost comprised of footage that’s not even in the finished product indicates just how terrible the overall campaign was for this film. If you can’t sell a movie based on footage that’ll make the final cut, how do you expect audiences to show up in doves? Some have argued that the moviegoing landscape has drastically changed since COVID, and audiences now prefer to stay home and wait for its VOD release than go to the cinema.

Of course, the landscape has changed, but when Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire made $80 million domestically just a few weeks ago, despite mixed reviews and word-of-mouth, this argument can’t explain the reasoning behind the failure of big-budget films with great reviews. Perhaps it’ll gain some legs next week, with an A- CinemaScore, but with other high-profile films making their way soon, including Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes and Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, it’ll be difficult for The Fall Guy to stand apart from these massive, hotly-anticipated tentpoles.

Meanwhile, the re-release of Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace gave The Fall Guy a run for its money, with a highly impressive $8 million tally in 2,700 theatres. A surprise, to be sure, but a welcomed one. Despite what the naysayers would want you to believe, the fanbase for The Phantom Menace is still surprisingly strong, and time has only been nicer to it compared to other titles of the Star Wars saga. It also helped that exclusive footage for The Acolyte played after the film, allowing fans to see a bit of the next Disney+ series of a galaxy far, far, away on the big screen.

Sony’s Tarot was also the summer’s first horror release and has already made its $8 million budget back, with a $10 million global tally, with $6 million made in domestic territories, despite a horrendous 12% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Perhaps it will crash and burn next week, but horror movies remain one of the most profitable film genres for a reason — they don’t cost much for the studios. Perhaps that should be the strategy to adopt for all blockbusters now, as the moviegoing landscape isn’t the same anymore after the advent of COVID-19, even if the public health emergency ended over a year ago.

Here is the full list of the top ten films of the weekend:

1. The Fall Guy (Universal): $28.5M – 4,002 theatres
2. Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace (Disney): $8.1M – 2,700 theatres
3. Challengers (Amazon MGM Studios): $7.6M (-49%) – 3,477 theatres
4. Tarot (Sony): $6.5M – 3,104 theaters
5. Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire (Warner Bros): $4.5M – 2,884 theatres
6. Civil War (A24): $3.6M (-48%) – 2,689 theatres
7. Unsung Hero (Lionsgate): $3.0M (-61%) – 2,832 theatres
8. Kung Fu Panda 4 (Universal): $2.4M (-33%) – 2,380 theatres
9. Abigail (Universal): $2.3M (-56%) – 2,638 theatres
10. Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (Sony): $1.8M (-45%) – 2,025 theatres

Source: Comscore