Marketing departments love it when their projects can claim to be the number one movie at the box office - but the reality is that the position is relative. Just because a film is able to hold on to the top spot doesn't mean that it is performing well. Take, for example, Ron Howard's Solo: A Star Wars Story. The sci-fi film notably under-performed in its first weekend, but still got the top spot. Now we have the week two results, and while it has maintained its station the numbers aren't great. Take a look at the full Top 10 below, and join me after for analysis!
Most blockbusters aim to drop somewhere in the vicinity of 50 percent in their second weekend, but Solo: A Star Wars Story dropped significantly more than that. Not counting the money from the Memorial Day holiday on Monday, the movie dropped an unfortunate 65 percent from weekend-to-weekend. That now puts its two week domestic gross at $148.9 million - and it's worth noting that's still less than what Rogue One: A Star Wars Story made in its first three days in December 2016 (it opened to $155 million). That's a fast sink, and nothing is going to be helped by the forthcoming releases of Gary Ross' Ocean's 8, Brad Bird's The Incredibles 2, and J.A. Bayona's Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom.
The domestic box office numbers are disappointing for Solo: A Star Wars Story, and the state of things in foreign markets aren't super positive either. To date it has only brought in $115.3 million from overseas, having been released in most markets (with Japan as an exception), and that equates to only 43.6 of the total draw. That could shift as we get deeper into summer, but right now the ratio is far more skewed than any of the other Star Wars releases by Disney. In fact, Rogue One is the only movie that made more here than abroad, and still that's a line of 50.4 percent versus 49.6 percent.
Meanwhile, David Leitch's Deadpool 2 is holding on strong. There was a lot of befuddlement regarding the movie's decision a few months ago to come out before Solo: A Star Wars Story instead of after it, but it turns out that the strategy worked. The film has grown to be a huge hit, not only going north of $250 million here at home, but tomorrow it will pass $600 million worldwide. It's still well short of the original Deadpool, which made $363 million domestically and $783.1 million globally by the end of its run, but the numbers should be comparable by the time 20th Century Fox is ready to take the sequel out of theaters.
As for the new releases... this wasn't a great weekend for new releases. Baltasar Kormákur's Adrift earned the most of the three wide release arrivals, but wound up with only $11.5 million and third place (the good news is that its reported budget is only $35 million). As for the other two, Leigh Whannell's Upgrade at the very least has received positive reviews even though it wasn't able to crack the Top 5. Really the big disaster is Tim Kirkby's Action Point. Paramount didn't do much to promote the Johnny Knoxville comedy, and not only did it make a sad $2.3 million over the last three days, but it got ripped by critics (19 percent on Rotten Tomatoes), and underwhelmed audiences ("C+" on CinemaScore). If you were hoping for a Jackass 4 any time soon, you might not want to hold your breath.
Clearly it was a down week for Hollywood, but hopefully things will pick up in the next Friday to Sunday stretch. There's a number of interesting features on their way to theaters including not only the aforementioned Ocean's 8, but also Drew Pearce's Hotel Artemis, Morgan Neville's Won't You Be My Neighbor?, and Ari Aster's Hereditary. I'll be back next week to go over how it all shakes out, so join me again then!
