Maxance Vincent
It’s a mild Tronin’ time for audiences around the world as Joachim Rønning’s Tron: Ares underperformed quite severely below its initial expectations. While the movie did open up in the top spot in a relatively quiet market, after a busy summer, it fell short of the $44 million opening of Joseph Kosinski’s Tron: Legacy, which became a cult classic years after its release.
Whether Ares will achieve the same status as Kosinski’s film remains to be seen, although Jared Leto’s presence significantly dampened the excitement many audience members had at the prospect of a third installment. To put it simply, Leto is box office poison, as illustrated in 2022’s Morbius, which became the subject of extensive memes, so much so that it caused Sony to release it a second time, thinking audiences would turn around and see it when no one showed up both times it was in cinemas.
Even I, a massive fan of the world first developed by Steven Lisberger in 1982 and then repurposed by Kosinski in 2010, who was looking forward to the sequel, immediately checked out when Leto was cast in the lead role. I dislike him both as a person and as an actor, making it challenging to promote a movie with his face prominently featured in the marketing, and I wouldn’t assume other people think the same. In fact, during the IMAX 3D double feature advanced screening of the movie I attended, many audience members laughed at Leto’s presence in the film, with some even yelling, “Let’s go, Jared! It’s Tronin’ time!” during pivotal scenes…
In other movie-related news, Derek Cianfrance‘s Roofman opened with a relatively modest $8 million tally. Modest, since its budget isn’t as high as Tron, and commercial prospects weren’t big on the movie’s laundry list of things to accomplish. That said, the film does have the opportunity to leg out as more awards-friendly titles begin to make their way to cinemas, such as Luca Guadagnino‘s After the Hunt, Jafar Panahi‘s It Was Just an Accident, and Scott Cooper’s Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere in the next few weeks.
Here is the full list of the top ten films of the weekend:
- Tron: Ares (Disney): $33.5M – 4,000 theatres
- Roofman (Paramount): $8.0M – 3,362 theatres
- One Battle After Another (Warner Bros): $6.6M (-39%) – 3,127 theatres
- Gabby’s Dollhouse: The Movie (Universal): $3.3M (-37%) – 3,049 theatres
- Soul on Fire (Sony): $3.0M – 1,720 theatres
- The Conjuring: Last Rites (Warner Bros): $2.9M (-29%) – 2,334 theatres
- Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – Infinity Castle (Sony): $2.2M (-37%) – 1,834 theatres
- The Smashing Machine (A24): $1.7M (-69%) – 3,321 theatres
- The Strangers: Chapter 2 (Lionsgate): $1.5M (-46%) – 1,878 theatres
- Good Boy (IFC Films): $1.3M (-42%) – 1,650 theatres
Source: Comscore
I have absolutely no idea how TRON became a big franchise at all. The first movie wasn’t that big of a hit, and neither was the sequel. The animated series was cancelled after one season. It never produced any runaway hit video games or comic book spinoffs.
Any business-minded studio executive would have admitted that this thing just doesn’t have broad audience appeal and cut their losses years ago.