The Mummy 2017

Weekend Box Office: Not Quite Dead on Arrival, But Close

The international box office has once again saved a huge studio movie from its less-than-blockbuster domestic performance. Tom Cruise’s latest star vehicle didn’t even make a dent in the strong holdover from last weekend’s top movie.

While most superhero movies open huge and suffer massive second-week drop-offs, that wasn’t the case with ‘Wonder Woman‘. Slipping only 45%, the film added another $57.1 million to the bank. Showing the strength of its performance, its mid-week numbers were also unusually high. Between Monday and Thursday, it made $45 million. After ten days, it’s up to $205 million domestically and $230.2 million internationally, giving the DC hit a worldwide total of $435.2 million so far.

Further proving that star power doesn’t account for much these days, Tom Cruise’s reboot of ‘The Mummy‘ opened in second place to $32.2 million. Playing on 4,035 screens, that’s a per-screen average of $7,992. (If you don’t know much about what’s normal for big movies like this, that number is low.) For a CG-heavy picture budgeted at $125 million (before its massive marketing campaign), that total is underwhelming. However, the international box office will keep it from being buried alive. Overseas, ‘The Mummy’ debuted to $141.8 million, bringing its worldwide opening to $174 million. Those numbers make it the biggest international and worldwide opening of Tom Cruise’s career.

DreamWorks’ ‘Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie‘ didn’t open too well last week. This week, it also fell a little harder than most kids’ movies. Taking a 48% hit, it finished in third place with $12.3 million, bringing its ten-day total up to $44.5 million. With a $38 million budget and an international roll-out that has yet to take flight, I can’t imagine that anyone at Fox is too worried about where ‘Captain Underpants’ will eventually end up.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales‘ tanked in its second week and the third didn’t do any better. Falling another 52%, it finished at #4 with $10.7 million. To date, the $230 million sequel has grossed $135.8 million domestically. Like ‘The Mummy’, it’s been saved by foreign ticket sales. If it wasn’t for an international box office total of $392.9 million bringing its worldwide gross up to $528.7 million, some exec at Disney would be walking the plank right now.

Still performing well after six weeks, ‘Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2‘ rounded out the Top 5 with $6.2 million. The $200 million sequel has earned $366.3 million domestically and $461.9 million overseas, pushing its worldwide total up to $828.2 million.

Playing on 2,533 screens, the weekend’s second wide release opened a #6. ‘It Comes at Night‘ scared up $6 million, which is $4 million below the pre-release estimates. The tiny $5 million picture may have earned critical praise, but with terrible word-of-mouth, it’s unlikely to do much more business.

Performing even worse was the weekend’s third wide release, the dog-centric military drama ‘Megan Leavey‘. Playing on 1,956 screens, the film made just $3.7 million and finished in the #8 spot. With an unknown budget, there’s no knowing of where that fits into the grand scheme of things, but that total certainly isn’t anything to bark about.

Top 10:

1. ‘Wonder Woman’ (Warner Bros.) – $57,180,000

2. ‘The Mummy’ (Universal) – $32,246,120

3. ‘Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie’ (Fox) – $12,300,000

4. ‘Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales’ (Buena Vista) – $10,713,000

5. ‘Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2’ (Buena Vista) – $6,242,000

6. ‘It Comes at Night’ (A24) – $6,000,788

7. ‘Baywatch’ (Paramount) – $4,600,000

8. ‘Megan Leavey’ (Bleecker Street) – $3,767,722

9. ‘Alien: Covenant’ (Fox) – $1,800,000

10. ‘Everything, Everything’ (Warner Bros.) – $1,620,000

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