At last! A savior has come to save the film industry. After an entire month of horrible box office numbers and perhaps the worst August alone since anyone could remember (and an even worse summer), in nearly 2 decades, a film has come along to rescue Hollywood
And its name is It!
Warner Bros.’ film version of Stephen King’s classic horror novel laid waste to everything in sight, even surpassing all box office predictions! The film was expected at first to do very well in somewhere between the $60-70 million range and then by Friday there were predictions that the could do $90-100 million.
But in reality, It just simply blew away all predictions, grossing an astounding $117 million this weekend.
And keep in mind that’s despite the fact that:
1) There had already been a successful CBS mini-series of the novel several years ago
2) The film actually covers only the first half of the book with the second half planned to be made later
3) Potential movie goers in a good chunk of Texas and practically all of Florida and other parts of the South had other things on their minds than going to a movie. Besides, all the theaters are either flooded or completely destroyed. If it wasn’t for the hurricanes, one could perhaps add another $5-8 million to It’s weekend box office totals.
Why? How did It do it? Firstana excellent marketing campaign with some great trailers that really peaked people’s interest and thankfully didn’t give everything anyway. But more importantly, it was simply the fact that it wasn’t a blessed remake, sequel or superhero movie. It was something different and original. So will Hollywood learn its lesson? Not hardly. Most likely they’ll look at the success of It and even Girls Trip for that matter, as they have in the past when some film does way better than expected. It will be seen as some sort of freak occurrence that happens once in a while and go back to business as usual. And even worse, judging from 2018’s summer film schedule, next summer could be even worse than this year in terms of box office numbers. What will happen then?
In a very distant second place was the Reese Witherspoon’s “has-anyone-ever-heard-of-it?” comedy Home Again which grossed just $9 million and The Hitman’s Bodyguard, which in some inexplicably way was the number one film for the past three weeks in a row (though most likely was because there was nothing else out there), comes in third with $4.8 million and $64 million to date.
Annabelle: Creation, Warner Bros.’ other big horror hit, in fourth place, is very close to the $100 million mark domestically and an amazing $280 million worldwide. This means there are going to be more Annabelle movies to come. The suspense thriller, Wind River, is turning out to be a rather modest box office success for the Weinstein Company which at this stage could use a film that makes any kind of money.
Girls Trip, in the meantime, has almost grossed almost $113.4 million domestically and is still doing huge business in the UK with nearly $11 million to date. It is now finally beginning to open wider in other foreign territories including Australia and South Africa, where it’s doing well, as well as Singapore and even Romania.
Full list:
1) It WB (NL) $117,150,000
2) Home Again ORF $9,028,222 –
3) The Hitman’s Bodyguard LG/S $4,850,000 Total: $64,897,007
4) Annabelle: Creation WB (NL) $4,000,000 -Total $96,267,010
5) Wind River Wein. $3,210,200 Total $25,002,192
6) Leap! Wein. $2,500,100 Total $15,874,536
7) Spider-Man: Homecoming Sony $2,015,000 Total $327,702,794
8) Dunkirk WB $1,950,000 Total $183,110,279
9) Logan Lucky BST $1,826,425 Total $25,228,666
10)The Emoji Movie Sony $1,060,000 Total $82,516,858
11) Despicable Me 3 Uni. $909,000 Total $259,958,175
12) Girls Trip Uni. $802,000 Total $113,360,470
