Box Office: 'Expendables 3' Implodes With $16.2M Weekend, 'Turtles' Tops 'Guardians'
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Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and
Guardians of the Galaxy top a trio of weak newcomers in what still amounts to a solid August weekend as summer nears its end.
I come today not to mock
The Expendables 3 but to mourn it.
TheExpendables opened on this weekend in 2010 with a robust $35 million, while
The Expendables 2 opened in August 2012 with $28m. As such, the fact that
The Expendables 3 opened with
$16.2m is something of a shock. Franchise fatigue has clearly set in, in
Americaat least. The third entry in the action all-stars to the rescue franchise this time features (deep breath)
Sylvester Stallone,
Arnold Schwarzenegger, Harrison Ford,
Jason Statham, Jet Li, Mel Gibson, Antonio Banderas,
Dolph Lundgren,
Wesley Snipes, Terry Crews, Randy Couture, Kellen Lutz, Ronda Rousey, and Bruce Lee, Kelsey Grammer. But the biggest (and best?) line-up yet couldn’t overcome franchise fatigue.
Expendables 3, produced for around $100 million by Nu Image and Millennium Films, suffered from two big problems.
The film got leaked online in a near-DVD quality form nearly a month before release. The film went out with a
PG-13 rating. Obviously the copious apparent downloads didn’t help, but we’ve seen with
Taken and
X-Men Origins: Wolverine that piracy can be overcome if the product is sold well or heavily anticipated anyway. We will never know how many people who watched the bootleg would have otherwise gone to the theater, but I would argue that the number is pretty low at least in America. The film played 66% over the age of 25, meaning that it played mostly to audiences too old to download and watch a bootlegged movie on their laptop. That’s not a defense of piracy, as it’s still technically stealing. Even if we argue that the piracy didn’t hurt
Expendables 3 as much as other factors, it is still a huge problem for smaller films that end up online in pristine form minutes after their VOD or DVD debuts. As is the case with most bad things, piracy screws the “poor” more than it screws the “rich.”
But the other issue is the one I’ve written at length about studios cutting clearly R-rated films down to a PG-13 for the sake of younger audiences who aren’t going to see them anyway.
Robocop went out as a PG-13 in February and played to mostly older audiences while the kids flocked to
The LEGO Movie. I imagine most kids will spend the weekend seeing
Guardians of the Galaxy or
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, while kids who want to sneak into an R-rated film (to the extent you can still do that) will pick
Let’s Be Cops over “Dad’s Favorite Action Stars Kill Again!”
The Expendables 3, with its PG-13 in hand, played 66% over the age of 25 years old, which is actually a bigger number than
Expendables (60%) and
Expendables 2 (65%). Point being, the film may have been watered down for kids, but the kids didn’t show up while the numbers indicate more older audiences didn’t bother with a PG-13
Expendables film.
The Expendables franchise is based primarily on the appeal of seeing old-school 80′s/90′s action heroes, best known for ultraviolent R-rated action, blowing stuff up and mowing down enemies together. Remove the blood and gore from that equation, especially as (A- Cinemascore rating aside) these movies frankly aren’t very good (I’ll defend the first one as a pretty good movie) and don’t deliver eye-popping action, and you’ve lost a key component of the franchise’s appeal. Both prior installments flirted with going PG-13 before backing away from the abyss. To paraphrase the film itself, America was the only territory stupid enough to cut an
Expendables film to a PG-13, and now territories like China and Russia are the only ones crazy enough to save its box office bacon. The last
Expendables film earned 72% of its business overseas, so this may be another “flop over here, hit over there” in the long run.
Speaking of
Let’s Be Cops, the $17 million comedy from 20th Century Fox opened on Wednesday with $5.2m and earned another $3.2m on Thursday. So its
$17.7m weekend gives the film a solid $26.11m Wed-Sun debut weekend. That’s a absolutely just-fine 5x weekend multiplier. And any film that tops its budget and then-some over the first five days is a hit. As I discussed on Thursday, the opening for the Jake Johnson/Damon Wayans Jr. farce is a good example of how strong marketing and pure audience appeal can overcome bad timing.
This may not have been the best weekend to release a film mining laughs over the notion that police officers can abuse their authority and their power, but audiences showed up anyway thanks to the strong hook (“Fake Cops, Real Trouble”) and crowd-pleasing trailer. August has been a solid time for R-rated comedies, as befits
Tropic Thunder, The Pineapple Express, and
We’re the Millers. So I wouldn’t be surprised to see real legs on this one, especially with no other major comedies on the horizon. The film played 56% Male, 54% under 25 years old, 50% Caucasian, 20% African-American, and 17% Hispanic.
The other new release was Weinstein Company’s
The Giver. The adaptation of Lois Lowry’s beloved 1993 novel about a dystopian future disguised as a utopia earned
$12.76 million on its first weekend. The good news is that the $25m Walden Media production, which stars
Meryl Streep and
Jeff Bridges, had a better debut than
The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones around this time last year ($14m for a Wed-Sun debut weekend). The bad news is that this one is probably going to fade fast. With poor reviews, purists upset about changes to the source material (aging up the young protagonists to allow for a teen romance subplot), and newbies seeing it as a rip-off of
Divergent (irony) without any buzz teen-friendly stars,
The Giver will be but a blip on the radar. Like
John Carter and
Bicentennial Man, it was a film based on a groundbreaking genre novel that suffered the fate of being ripped off a million times before it ever came to the screen. It will be an answer to the trivia question “Name the movie where Meryl Streep and Jeff Bridges got out-acted by Taylor Swift.”
In holdover news,
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles earned
$28.4 million to top the weekend. Now for the Paramount (Viacom, Inc.) franchise starter, that’s a 57% drop from last weekend, a not terrible plunge and a sign that the film is playing quite strong with kid-centric matinees (it jumped around 40% from Friday to Saturday). That would give the
TMNT reboot $117m over ten-days. It should pass both its $125m budget and the $135m total of the 1990
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles by next weekend at the latest. Passing the adjusted-for-inflation $260m total of the 1990 original is not going to happen, but the $152m adjusted-for-inflation total of
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze ($83m in 1991) is basically a given. The Michael Bay-produced revamp has earned $185.1m worldwide.
Walt Disney and
Marvel Studios‘
Guardians of the Galaxy held better over its third weekend than its second, earning
$24.74 million and dropping just 41% from last weekend. It now sits at $222.28m, which makes it Marvel’s second-biggest non-sequel after
Iron Man ($320m). It crossed
Thor: The Dark World ($206m) on Saturday and should cross
X-Men: Days of Future Past ($232m) over the next week. It is still on track to top
The LEGO Movie ($257m) and
Captain America: The Winter Soldier ($259m) as 2014′s domestic champion until
Hunger Games: Mockingjay part I. As far as just the summer, it will cross
Transformers: Age of Extinction ($243m and basically done) by the end of next week. I was a little dismayed about the large weekend drop last weekend, but this one is not a quick-kill blockbuster in any sense of the word. Heck, with a mostly quiet September (it gets active towards the end of the month),
Guardians of the Galaxy could make a run for $300m, even if it’s still a long shot. Worldwide, the $170m space opera is at $418.7m.
Fox’s
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes also crossed $200 million domestic on Friday and now sits with $205m domestic. The $170m sequel crossed $500m worldwide last weekend and is making a run for $600m. Universal’s
Lucy crossed $100m on Thursday, which darn-well matters considering Luc Besson’s $40m female-centric action fantasy sold purely on the notion of watching a super-powered Scarlett Johansson kick bad-guy butt. It earned $5.3m for the weekend and brought its cume to $107.5m domestic and $168.5m worldwide. As
noted on Friday,
How to Train Your Dragon 2 opened in China on Thursday to a robust $5.6m opening day, which sent the
DreamWorks Animation sequel soaring over the $500m mark and past the $494m global cume of
How to Train Your Dragon.
Into the Storm dropped 55% from last weekend, as the Warner Bros. (
Time Warner, Inc.) found-footage tornado film earned just $7.7 million for a new $31.3m domestic total. It should earn its $50m production budget in America before hoping for an overseas bounce.
22 Jump Street has now earned $304m worldwide.
Step Up All In earned $2.7 million on its second weekend, down 58% from last weekend’s sad debut. The film has just and a mere $11.8m after ten days, meaning that this may be the last time we Americans get to see a
Step Up film in theaters. I weep not just for me, but for you (Mooossseee!!!).
Get On Up earned $1.9m on its third weekend for a $27m total. Walt Disney’s
The One-Hundred Foot Journey earned $7.11m on its second weekend, down just 35% and giving the Helen Mirrren drama a solid $23.6m after ten days, just above its $22m budget.
The Purge: Anarchy now has $70m domestic and $100m worldwide while
Tammy has earned $83m domestic on a $20m budget.
Boyhood has now earned $13.8m after a $2.15m weekend in 771 theaters while Woody Allen’s
Magic in the Moonlight has $4.71m after a weak $1.88m weekend. Also, Paramount’s
Hercules has earned $68.1m domestic.
That’s it for today, folks! Join me next weekend for the last weekend of summer, when Weinstein Company’s
Sin City: A Dame to Kill For duels Warner Bros.’
If I Stay In.
1.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, 2/3,980, Paramount,
$28.4 million, -57%, $117.6 million.
2.
Guardians of the Galaxy, 3/3,697, Disney/Marvel,
$24.7 million, -41%, $222.3 million.
3.
Let's Be Cops, 1/3,094, 20th Century Fox,
$17.7 million, $26.1 million.
4.
The Expendables 3, 1/3,221, Lionsgate/Millennium,
$16.2 million.
5.
The Giver, 1/3,003, The Weinstein Co./Walden,
$12.7 million.
6.
Into the Storm, 2/3,434, Warner Bros./New Line,
$7.7 million, -55%, $31.3 million.
7.
The Hundred-Foot Journey, 2/2,042, Disney/DreamWorks,
$7.1 million, -35%, $23.6 million.
8.
Lucy, 4/2,520, Universal/EuropaCorp,
$5.3 million, -44%, $$107.5 million.
9.
Step Up All In, 2/2,072, Lionsgate/Summit,
$2.7 million, -58%, $11.8 million.
10. Boyhood, 6/771, IFC Films,
$2.2 million, +9%, $13.8 million.
as well.
