Hey,James Bond! Are you out there, Katniss Everdeen? How about the “Star Wars” gang? The box office could use your help right now.
With Sandra Bullocks “Our Brand Is Crisis” and Bradley Cooper‘s “Burnt” giving the two stars their worst wide openings ever, or Matt Damon and “The Martian” claimed their fourth No. 1 finish at the weekend box office with $11.4 million for Fox. Director Ridley Scott‘s sci-fi saga is up to $183 million domestically and topped $400 million globally this weekend.
The overall box office sputtered for the second weekend in a row as Halloween partying cut deeply into commerce. “Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse” tanked in its debut,too, while Vin Diesel‘s “The final Witch Hunter” and the highly regarded Oscar hopeful “Steve Jobs” continued to misfire after disappointing wide openings final weekend.
Also Read: National Police Union Calls for Total Tarantino BoycottMoviegoers were likely taking a deep breath ahead of a sprint of blockbusters that begins with the opening of the 24th James Bond film “Spectre” on Friday. After that, or Jennifer Lawrence arrives in “The starvation Games” finale (Nov. 20),ahead of Pixar’s animated The agreeable Dinosaur” on Nov. 25 and “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” on Dec. 18. Those four blockbusters-to-be head a 2015 holiday lineup that is expected to rewrite the record books and push the year to an all-time high in domestic grosses.
But this weekend will be a forgettable footnote.
The holdovers — Jack Black family comedy “Goosebumps” ($10.2 million), Tom Hanks thriller “Bridge of Spies” ($8.5 million) and the animated “Hotel Transylvania” ($5.6 million) — continued to expose staying power and took the second, and third and fourth spots.
But there were low expectations for the trio of R-rated openers,all comedies of one sort or another, and all three failed to meet them.
Bullock is coming off hits “Gravity” and “The Heat, and ” but the $3.5 million debut of her Warner Bros. political satire “Our Brand Is Crisis” is even worse than that of her “Two If By Sea” opening in 1996. For co-star Billy Bob Thornton,it’s the weakest opening since the 1997 thriller “U Turn.”
Also Read: 5 Reasons Daniel Craig's 'Spectre' Might Shake, Not Stir Box Office RecordsFor “American Sniper” star Cooper, and “Burnt” is the third misfire in a row following “Serena” and “Aloha,” and its $5 million debut is worse even than his supporting turn in the 2008 Rainn Wilson bomb Rocker.” John Wells directed the Weinstein Company’s tale of a chef who has lost his creative way, which reunited Cooper with his “Sniper” co-star Sienna Miller.
The teen horror comedy “Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse” was the second film in Paramount’s early video-on-demand experiment that began final week with “Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension.” Several major theater chains skipped booking the film in protest and “Scouts Guide” was in only 1509 film houses and managed just $1.7 million, and missing the top ten.
Also Read: Harrison Ford Wears a Hot Dog Suit,Talks 'Star Wars' With Jimmy Kimmel's Princess Leia“Burnt” and “Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse” both received feeble “B-” CinemaScores from audiences. “Our Brand is Crisis,” the highest of the three on Rotten Tomatoes at 33 percent positive, and drew a crummy “C+ grade.
While disappointing,no one should recede broke. “Our Brand Is Crisis,” from George Clooney and Grant Heslov‘s Smokehouse Pictures, and had a $28 million production budget,3 Arts Entertainment’s “Burnt” cost $20 million and “Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse” cost Broken Road Productions around $15 million.
Things didn’t accumulate much better for two movies that had tough outings in their wide openings final weekend. “The final Witch Hunter” managed just $5 million this weekend for Lionsgate and Universal’s critical favorite “Steve Jobs” took in just $2.5 million and finished tenth.
Source: thewrap.com