'Garfield' Wins Slow Weekend at the Box Office
by EG
A new animated Garfield movie was the best Hollywood had to offer in theaters this week, and the movie won a box-office race that was extremely sluggish. Last week's top movie, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, slumped in its second weekend, continuing a disappointing run that will see the big-budget flick fail to turn a profit. It's not the only project feeling woeful, though, as the overall box office take was down a staggering two-thirds compared to the same weekend last year. Read on for details.
It’s another bummer of a weekend at the summer of box office, where overall domestic revenue looks to be down 69 percent — no, not a typo — from a year ago as Hollywood and theater owners continue to grapple with a lack of big event pics. And year-to-date revenue is now down 24 percent over last year.
For some, there is reason to smile. Alcon and Sony’s The Garfield Movie easily purred past George Miller’s Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga to top the weekend chart with an estimated $14 million for a domestic tally of $51.6 million. Alcon fully financed the $60 million film, which crossed the $100 million mark overseas for a global tally of $152.2 million.
Furiosa, costing a pricey $168 million to produce, fell a steep 59 percent to $10.75 million, dashing hopes that it could rebound after a disappointing Memorial Day opening. The dystopian epic is also stalling overseas, where it took in only $21 million from 77 markets for a global total of $114.4 million ($49.7 million domestic, $64.7 million international). No one would have expected Garfield to earn more than Furiosa this weekend internationally, with $27 million from 60 markets.
Compounding Furiosa‘s woes, the film also got edged out by John Krasinski’s original family film IF, now in its third weekend. The Ryan Reynolds-starrer is enjoying strong staying power, and grossed another $10.8 million domestically for a North American tally of $80.4 million and $138 million worldwide.
20th Century and Disney’s The Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes placed No. 4 domestically with $8.8 million while earning another $15.2 million from 52 markets overseas to rank as the top-grossing summer title to date with $337.1 million in worldwide ticket sales. Domestically, the newest installment in the long-running franchise has grossed $140 million and is on the verge of passing up the $147 million earned by 2017’s War for the Planet of the Apes.
The Fall Guy remained in the upper reaches of the chart despite now being available on premium VOD. The Ryan Gosling-Emily Blunt action comedy grossed $4.2 million to place No. 5. The movie’s global tally is $157.9 million.
Lionsgate’s The Strangers: Chapter 1 is also still scaring up business. The $8.5 million pic, coming in No. 6, earned $3.6 million for a domestic tally of $28.4 million.
Crunchyroll and Sony’s anime sports film Haikyu!! The Dumpster Battle placed No. 7 with an estimated opening of $3.5 million from 1,125 theaters.
The Japanese film was among several new movies opening moderately wide in hopes of taking advantage of the slowdown in big studio event tiles.
Get the rest of the story at The Hollywood Reporter.