My, oh my, at one point Adam Sandler was a comedian that could do no wrong, at least in the eyes of the general moviegoing audience, but the stench has finally caught on and people are looking the other way. Sandler’s films used to be easy $40 million openers and $100+ overall domestic releases, and he did manage as much in 2013 with Grown Ups 2, but other than that sophomoric effort it’s been numbers like $14.2m (Blended), $13.4m (That’s My Boy) and $25m (Jack and Jill) over the last few years and now Pixels, carrying an $88 million budget, can’t even secure the top spot over the second weekend of a less-than-stellar Marvel release.
Ant-Man takes the top spot again, dipping a rather hefty 56% for a second weekend $24.9 million, bringing its cume to $106 million. As for Pixels, it opened with $24 million and a “B” CinemaScore. I guess there is a shelf life for subpar comedy, but I’d wager Sandler could probably make another Grown Ups (if he kept the budget down) and while those Hotel Transylvania movies continue to get made he’ll probably be just fine considering he also nailed down that Netflix deal, which will see his features going straight to streaming rather than infecting multiplexes much longer.
Meanwhile, Southpaw leads middling results for the other two new wide releases this week, scoring $16.7 million while the John Green adaptation, Paper Towns, managed only $12.6 million. The Paper Towns result sounds weak in comparison to the $48 million opening of The Fault in Our Stars last year, but the only comparison, really, is Green. The films are night and day in comparison of quality and most people I’ve talked to that have read both books are rather quick to praise “Fault” and dismiss “Paper Towns”, which seems to be, mostly, what happened this weekend.
On that note, I was a little curious as I sat, watched and hated Paper Towns, just who exactly the film was for. Well, it played to a 71% female audience and 78% of the overall audience was below the age of 25. I wonder how much of that 78% was below 16, because that movie didn’t have an ounce of “adult” to it.
As for Southpaw, the $30 million budget helps that soft opening weekend look a little stronger. The “A” CinemaScore suggests it might have a slightly stronger than average holdover (though I’m not expecting much) and the “B+” for Paper Towns means it too will be out of theaters and forgotten soon enough, especially considering it made more than half its weekend total ($6.3m) on Friday. Made on a $12 million budget, however, this result isn’t a back breaker.
Outside the newcomers, Minions is still holding on well, dropping 55% for another $22.9 million, bringing its domestic total to $262.4 million (passing the original Despicable Me) as it approaches $800 million globally.
The bigger story, however, is Jurassic World, which had a sequel officially announced this week and has now to #3 on the all-time domestic gross chart with $624 million. This puts it just ahead of The Avengers ($623.3m) and $35 million shy of besting Titanic ($658.6m) for second place all-time on the domestic chart… not adjusted for inflation. Anyone see that coming?
Next weekend sees the release of Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, Vacation and the limited release of the very solid indie feature The End of the Tour. The weekend should be M:I‘s for the taking and early reviews suggest it’s solid. I’m seeing it tomorrow and will have the official report on quality soon enough.
