Welcome back to another week of Top Box Office Winners and Losers. In this article, I highlight a few movies that did well and one that fell below expectations. This weekend created some interesting choices. When deciding on films to pick I prefer to pick two winners and one loser as I want to celebrate the films that do well or hit particular milestones earlier in the week. I don’t want to pick multiple losers, mostly because I don’t think it’s fair to kick a bad movie when it’s down. So this week, Godzilla: King of the Monsters and The Secret Life of Pets 2 get dishonorable mentions. Godzilla 2 for dropping 67.5% from its opening weekend and The Secret Life of Pets 2 ($47 million) for failing to reach half of what the first film made on its opening weekend ($104.3 million). You know which movie is the true loser this weekend and if you don’t then you can continue reading below to find out.
Top Box Office: Winners
Pokemon Detective Pikachu
I don’t normally consider a film that has made less than its total budget domestically as a winner but this isn’t a normal situation. Video game adaptations are tricky to make so with the bar set so low it’s not hard to walk out as a champion, but that’s just what this film is doing. This past Monday Detective Pikachu passed Lara Croft: Tomb Raider ($131 million) as the highest grossing video game adaptation domestically. It took nearly 20 years but we did it, folks! The film probably won’t make $150 million domestically as it only took in right under $3 million this weekend but I’ll take victories where I can get them. We still have a very long way to go before video games as movies really breaks out into the mainstream. There are plenty of games out there that have a fantastic narrative but the issue has always been translating a 40-hour story, give or take, down to a 2-hour film. Detective Pikachu will go down as an okay to decent success ($409 million worldwide versus a $150 million budget) but WB had to have been hoping for more from what is essentially the most lucrative franchise in the world right now. I think if the film had had a companion video game released alongside it (or just a re-release of Detective Pikachu for the Nintendo Switch) then maybe a bit more money could have been made. But regardless, all hail Pikachu as the king of the video game adaptations. Until Sonic next year! No, wait, I can’t even say that with a straight face. Let’s just keep expectations low.
Aladdin (2019)
Two weeks in a row!? Yup. It was a slower-than-it-should-have-been weekend and with Disney’s so-so track record with live-action reboots, I felt it was worth it to add the film as a winner this weekend. I also felt like it was necessary for me to add so many hyphens to that last sentence. In its third weekend, Aladdin managed to snag third place with $24.5 million, which raises its domestic gross up to $232.3 million. Worldwide the film is sitting over $600 million. If we don’t count inflation, the film has actually made more than the original animated film did ($217.3 million) which is interesting. I don’t think this means that people enjoy the reboot more than the original, though. I think more people are going out to see the film multiple times as there’s some magic with the film and besides Detective Pikachu it’s the best family film out. A much-needed win for Disney outside of Marvel or Star Wars (minus Solo) properties.
Top Box Office: Losers
Dark Phoenix
I still haven’t fully watched X-Men Apocalypse. I quit watching the film after the plot had to give Magneto another reason to go bad guy again (it gets old after a while even though I know he’s a bad guy). I really believed the actors were just going through the motions in that film, wanting to wrap up their contracts as soon as possible. So when the final installment of the Fox X-Men franchise wraps up with such a feeble whimper I can only shake my head for what could have been. Opening this weekend with $33 million, it is not only the lowest opening in the franchise’s history but it is also critically panned sitting with a 22% on Rotten Tomatoes. Audience scores are a bit nicer, sitting at 65%, but is this really the way to go out? I don’t see how the film will really recover internationally, either, as $140 million, which is similar to what Godzilla: King of the Monsters opened with last weekend, versus an unknown budget doesn’t inspire much confidence of strong play in the foreign market. Did you know that the director of Dark Phoenix was also a writer for X-Men: The Last Stand? How do you mess this story up twice? It’s a disservice to an extremely talented cast of actors and actresses. So now we have to look forward to when Disney decides to bring the X-Men into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I just wish this franchise could have gone out on better terms. I also miss Hugh Jackman as Wolverine. Things just won’t ever be the same.
