'Space Jam' Tries to Topple 'Black Widow' This Weekend
by EG
The post-pandemic movie business gets serious this weekend as Space Jam: A New Legacy debuts in theaters and on the HBO Max streaming platform on the same day. The movie's release comes a week after Disney/Marvel's Black Widow showed that theaters and streaming platforms could lure viewers to see a movie at the same time. The difference this week? Space Jam is available to HBO Max subscribers for free. Read on for details.
Via Variety.
Black Widow has faced down mad titans and genocidal robots, but can the veteran Avenger take down a band of scrappy Looney Toons?
It’ll be a showdown between Disney’s and Marvel’s “Black Widow” and the Warner Bros. sequel “Space Jam: A New Legacy” at the domestic box office, with Scarlett Johansson’s superhero adventure poised to reclaim the top spot.
After “Black Widow” opened on July 9 to $80 million in North America, a record for COVID times, the comic book adaptation is projected to add $24 million to $28 million in its second weekend of release. Independent tracking services suggest that range is conservative and show the final weekend figure could reach $32 million through Sunday. A $30 million-plus haul in its second frame would be a decline on par with fellow Marvel standalone adventures such as 2018’s “Ant-Man and the Wasp” and 2017’s “Spider-Man: Homecoming,” which each dropped 60% from their initial weekends. It would also be a slight improvement on another pandemic-era release, Universal’s “Fast & Furious” sequel “F9,” which debuted to $60 million in June and plunged 67% in its sophomore outing.
In a rare moment of streaming revenue transparency, Disney revealed last weekend that “Black Widow” collected $60 million globally on Disney Plus, where the film premiered (for a $30 surcharge) on the same day as its theatrical release. For now, Disney isn’t expected to update that figure beyond its opening weekend sales.
Similar to “Black Widow,” audiences don’t have to visit their local movie theater to see “Space Jam: A New Legacy.” The sequel to 1996’s cartooned sports comedy “Space Jam” is also playing on HBO Max for the next 31 days. The film is projected to open to $20 million from 3,950 locations, which would be a moderate start considering the film cost $150 million to produce. LeBron James, starring as a fictional version of himself, and the Looney Tunes crew — Bugs Bunny, Tweety Bird, Lola Bunny and Daffy Duck, among others — team up in “Space Jam: A New Legacy” for a high-stakes game of basketball. Reviews for the lastest “Space Jam” haven’t been released yet.
Also new to theaters this weekend is Sony’s horror movie “Escape Room: Tournament of Champions.” The PG-13 film, a follow up to the 2019 thriller “Escape Room,” is expected to generate $7 million to $10 million from 2,775 locations over the weekend.
Get the rest of the story at Variety.