Weekend Box Office Report: All Hail The Truly Wondrous ‘Wonder Woman’
Based on how this weekend’s box office numbers shaped up, odds are good that you either saw Wonder Woman in theaters or you avoided the multiplex altogether. It was a record-setting few days for everyone’s favorite warrior princess — sorry, Xena — but things were decidedly less rosy if your movie was… well, literally anything else. Here are the box office estimates as of Sunday afternoon:
Film | Weekend | Per Screen | ||
1 | Wonder Woman | $100,505,000 | $24,131 | $100,505,000 |
2 | Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie | $23,500,000 | $6,843 | $23,500,000 |
3 | Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales | $21,613,000 (-65%) | $5,054 | $114,621,771 |
4 | Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 | $9,733,000 (-53%) | $2,775 | $355,474,332 |
5 | Baywatch | $8,500,000 (-54%) | $2,331 | $41,724,438 |
6 | Alien: Covenant | $4,000,000 (-62%) | $1,504 | $67,219,484 |
7 | Everything, Everything | $3,320,000 (-44%) | $1,398 | $28,301,587 |
8 | Snatched | $1,340,000 (-66%) | $825 | $43,868,414 |
9 | Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul | $1,220,000 (-72%) | $584 | $17,824,604 |
10 | King Arthur: Legend of the Sword | $1,170,000 (-64%) | $957 | $37,172,957 |
The big story this weekend is Wonder Woman. Earlier this week, Deadline estimated that Wonder Woman would likely earn somewhere between $65 and $75 million domestically and $175 million worldwide; instead, the film opened with $100 million in North America en route to an international gross of $223 million. Not only is that easily a record for a movie directed by a woman — congratulations, Patty Jenkins! — it’s also in line with the opening numbers of superhero favorites like Captain America: The Winter Soldier and the original Guardians of the Galaxy. It’s hard to say where Wonder Woman will land when all is said and done; while it’d be easy to point to Guardians of the Galaxy’s total gross as a ballpark estimate, when a movie outperforms its projections by this much, you may be looking at a movie with some serious staying power.
In second place this week is Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie with $23.5 million. This makes Captain Underpants half-failure, half-success. On the one hand, the film’s opening doesn’t come anywhere near DreamWorks Animation classics like Shrek and Kung Fu Panda; Captain Underpants is a lot closer to Turbo and Rise of the Guardians, two of the more disappointing movies in DreamWorks’ oeuvre. On the other hand, those two films cost $135 and $145 million to make, respectively, and DreamWorks only spent $38 million on Captain Underpants as part of its new emphasis on more cost-effective animated movies. With excellent reviews across the board — Captain Underpants nearly matched Wonder Woman’s RottenTomato score with a lot less fanfare — I could see families circling back to the movie once they get Diana Prince out of their system.
In third place is Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, which grossed $21.6 million in its second weekend. That may not seem too bad in a vacuum, but it’s important to remember that a 50% drop between a film’s opening and second weekend is the industry standard for blockbusters, and Pirates tumbled 65% in Week 2. While the international numbers are still there — Pirates also broke $500 million at the box office, with China and Russia (hmm) leading the way — there’s no denying that Pirates has underperformed with domestic audiences. Pirates was originally estimated to break $100 million in its opening weekend; they finally hit that mark in weekend two. Not great, Bob.
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 continues to hold strong in its fifth weekend, pulling in $9.7 million in fourth place and inching closer to Deadpool on the all-time Marvel movie charts. With just over $800 million worldwide, it’s hard to see Guardians cracking a billion dollars at the box office, but I’m sure Disney is happy with the return on their investment for this one. Dwayne Johnson’s Baywatch reboot follows Guardians up in fifth place with $8.5 million, making the movie just two million worldwide shy of breaking even ($67 million vs. a $69 million budget). Despite Johnson’s international star power, the film’s mature content — or maybe a lack of interest in some of its dumb American stereotypes — have caused this particular apple to fall pretty darn far from the tree.
In sixth place is Alien: Covenant, which is clearly running out of steam with only $4 million. We’ve discussed the disappointing numbers for this movie ad naseum over the past few weeks — a disappointment at its budget, a borderline disaster given the brand recognition — but it remains to be seen if the film’s $173 million global gross will be enough to let Ridley Scott finish out his Prometheus trilogy. Everything, Everything, the modest little YA success of the summer thus far, followed in seventh place with $3.3 million. With a budget of only $10 million, the producers will gladly take the $28 million the film has amassed with domestic audiences thus far. Not all movies can be smash hits; like any good stock market executive, you need a handful of smaller over-performers to round out your portfolio.
Snatched landed in eight place this weekend with a meager $1.3 million, but perhaps more frightening was the per-theater numbers. The final three movies on this list each grossed less than a thousand dollars per theater, with Snatched finishing at $825 per. If you saw Amy Schumer’s comedy this weekend, you made a noticeable impact on its box office success. Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul finished in ninth with $1.2 million, another film that has barely broken even thus far on its theatrical run and a big disappointment based on the numbers from the rest of the series. Finally, rounding out this week’s Top 10 is King Arthur: Legend of the Sword, which is set to exit the domestic charts with only a $37 million return on its studio’s $175 million investment. As for that major Arthurian franchise? D-E-D spells dead, folks.