'Men in Black: International' Has Weak Opening Weekend
by EG
Men in Black: International wasn't expected to have a blockbuster opening weekend, but its performance was disappointing even compared to the low expectations set for it. The movie was the latest franchise sequel/spinoff to fail to capture the interest of moviegoers. Read on for details.
The summer 2019 box office has not been kind to studio sequels nor spinoffs. Disney/Fox's Dark Phoenix crashed with a $33 million opening, while Warner Bros.' Godzilla: Kong of the Monsters bowed to an toothless $47 million domestically. And this weekend has continued the disappointing trend, as Sony's Men in Black: International debuted to a sluggish $28.5 million at 4,200 locations.
The movie has a 27 percent fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, but fared better with audiences, who gave it a B CinemaScore. The weekend crowd was largely under 35 (74 percent), with the single largest age group falling between 18-34 years old (50 percent). Audiences were 48 percent Caucasian, 22 percent Hispanic, 15 percent Asian and 15 percent African-American.
Tessa Thompson and Chris Hemsworth star in the new pic as Agent H and Agent M, respectively, who spearhead the London bureau of the agency that is charged with protecting and concealing the Earth from an alien species. F. Gary Gray, the filmmaker behind franchise fare like Fate of the Furious, directed the latest installment in the MIB franchise.
International trailed behind the opening weekends of the other installments in the Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones-starring MIB universe, all of which bowed in the low-to-mid $50 millions (unadjusted for inflation). But International is a spinoff of the lucrative series, so Sony — which produced the movie with Hemisphere and Tencent — and industry experts were not expecting it would open near those numbers.
Get the rest of the story at The Hollywood Reporter.
Did you see a movie this weekend? Tell us which one in the comments below.