Gerard Butler blows up the competition this weekend with a $21 million take for the latest Has Fallen picture.
Who knew the one live-action movie series this summer to hold on decently from movie-to-movie would be those Olympus Has Fallen movies? The newest installment in the series, Angel Has Fallen, topped the box office and dipped only 4% from the opening weekend of its predecessor, a tiny drop from its predecessor that the opening weekends of Godzilla: King of the Monsters and Hobbs & Shaw would have killed for. Granted, Angel had a lot less far to fall than those movies which were gigantic blockbusters where these Fallen movies are basically just action B-movies.
However, the $21.25 million box office bow for Angel has Fallen was still much better than expected and a solid haul for a pre-Labor Day weekend release. Its a bow that gives Gerard Butler his seventh leading man role to open over $20 million while it’s also about even with the $21.3 million bow of The Hitman’s Bodyguard, another R-rated Lionsgate/Millennium action movie that opened in late August.
If Angel Has Fallen plays in the long run at the box office like The Hitman’s Bodyguard, it’ll make about $70 million domestically, above the $62.5 million domestic total of London Has Fallen. This overperforming Gerard Butler vehicle serves as another feather in Lionsgate’s solid 2019 box office cap. 2019 hasn’t been free of box office duds for the studio (Hellboy, Long Shot and Anna all tanked).
However, the studio had one of their biggest titles ever in John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum, the final Madea movie did great business and both of their August titles (Angel Has Fallen and Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark) have both overperformed to $20+ million bows. Not soo shabby for the studio, even if their newest hit movie just reminds me how badly we all failed the exceedingly entertaining White House Down.
Good Boys fell 45% this frame for a second-weekend haul of $11.7 million for a domestic total of $42 million. That’s a better second-weekend hold than the 54% drop of Sausage Party and it’s worth noting that Good Boys has already doubled its opening weekend after ten days of release. How it holds over the Labor Day frame will be critical in determining its overall domestic cume by it looks like Good Boys is at least headed for a total in the $65-70 million range.
Overcomer, the newest directorial effort from Alex Kendrick, opened to $8.25 million, a result that’s squarely “OK”. In the pantheon of Christian movies, it’s the eighteenth biggest opening ever in this subgenre, but down from the opening weekends of Kendrick’s last two movies, War Room and Courageous, both of which opened in significantly fewer locations than Overcomer, which bowed in 1,723 theaters.
How come Overcomer didn’t do better? The marketing was less cohesive than other Kendrick directorial efforts which tended to squarely focus on spirituality helping to combat specific forms of familial strife. For Overcomer, posters and trailers kept jumping between the generic antics of a teenage runner and a schlubby coach, a premise that just wasn’t as enticing. Considering this movie was made for peanuts, though, it’ll still make a healthy profit for Sony and Affirm Films.
Just behind Overcomer was The Lion King, which dipped 34% this frame to gross another $8.15 million. Now having grossed $510.5 million domestically and surpassed the $504 million domestic haul of Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King is not only the biggest of these animated Disney movie remakes but also the biggest Disney title of all-time that doesn’t hail from PIXAR, Lucasfilm or Marvel Studios. Lion King has also cracked $1.5 billion worldwide, making it the ninth biggest movie in history at the worldwide box office.
Rounding out the top five and nipping at Lion King’s heels was Hobbs & Shaw with a fourth-weekend gross of $8.15 million, a 42% drop from last weekend. Hobbs & Shaw isn’t holding quite as well on a weekend-to-weekend basis as many past August blockbusters but the massive opening weekend it just experienced in China should soothe any domestic box office concerns. Hobbs & Shaw has now grossed $148 million domestically.
Ready or Not may not have been a major sleeper hit, but it still did fine business by opening to $7.55 million over the three-day weekend and a five-day haul of $10.57 million. That’s not a great bow for a title that got released in just over 2,850 locations (the second-widest theater count ever for a Fox Searchlight title), but the movie cost just $6 million to make so it’ll be fine in the long run. It’s also noteworthy that Ready or Not managed to have an opening weekend comparable to recent Disney/Fox titles like Stuber and The Art of Racing in the Rain despite having a much less well-known cast to its name. Plus, it held quite well on a day-to-day basis over the weekend so there’s clearly some good word-of-mouth working in its favor.
But why wasn’t Ready or Not the next big horror movie sleeper hit? Lots of horror movie competition in the marketplace from Scary Stories and 47 Meters Down: Uncaged is probably the biggest factor while Fox Searchlight’s marketing failed to really build on the immensely positive word-of-mouth it drummed up.
The Angry Birds Movie 2 dipped 38% this frame to add $6.3 million to its domestic box office haul that now stands at just $27 million while Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark fell 40% and grossed an additional $6 million for a domestic haul of $50.4 million. In ninth place, Dora and the Lost City of Gold dropped 39% for a third-weekend gross of $5.2 million and a domestic gross of $43 million while Once Upon a Time in Hollywood rounded out the top ten with a fifth-weekend haul of $5 million and a current domestic gross of $123.1 million, taking it past the $120.5 million domestic gross of Inglourious Basterds to become the second-biggest Quentin Tarantino movie ever domestically.
47 Meters Down: Uncaged fell 52% in its second weekend of release, grossing another $4 million in the process and bringing its domestic haul up to $15.4 million. In twelfth place, we find a sleeper hit in the form of The Peanut Butter Falcon, which expanded into wide release this weekend and managed to have one of the most impressive wide release expansions for a Summer 2019 limited release. Grossing $3 million from 991 locations for a $3,036 per-theater average, this indie feature has now grossed $3.5 million and with a three-day holiday weekend around the corner, it’s likely this will become only the fourth limited release of 2019 to crack $10 million domestically.
Meanwhile, Blinded by the Light couldn’t recover from its lackluster opening weekend as it dropped 52% for a second-weekend haul of just $2.1 million for a domestic gross of $8.2 million.
In its third weekend of release, The Art of Racing in the Rain dropped 54% to add $2.07 million to its domestic gross of just $21.4 million. And now, something that hasn’t been in the news cycle at all this week, a Spider-Man movie. Spider-Man: Far From Home dropped 40% this weekend for an eighth-weekend haul of $1.6 million for a domestic gross of $379.7 million. Where’d You Go, Bernadette fell 59% this weekend for a second-weekend gross of $1.4 million and a ten-day domestic gross of $6.5 million. The Farewell dropped another 36% this frame to add $944,482 to its domestic haul that now stands at a fantastic $14.4 million.
Luce expanded to 160 theaters this weekend but grossed only $253,500 for a per-theater average of $1,584 for a domestic total of $864,182. Brittany Runs a Marathon opened to $175,000 in 5 locations this weekend for a per-theater average of $35,000, the fourth-best limited release opening weekend per-theater average of 2019.
Amazon Studios is taking a slower approach to expanding this one’s theater count compared to some of their past titles, it won’t go into wide release until its fourth weekend whereas fellow Amazon Studios title Late Night went into wide release in its second weekend. With a really good limited release debut like this one and a more measured release plan, Brittany could totally go the distance at the domestic box office.
After the Wedding expanded into 81 locations this weekend and grossed $163,200 for a per-theater average of $2,015 and a domestic gross of $357,732 while One Child Nation expanded into 34 locations but actually eased 5% from last weekend. Grossing another $45,174 this frame, this documentary has now grossed $150,080 domestically.
The Nightingale grossed only $41,883 from 51 locations this frame for a per-theater average of $821 and a domestic gross of $252,506. Opening in limited release this weekend was Give Me Liberty, which bowed to $33,391 from 3 locations for a per-theater average of $11,130 while Miles Davis: Birth of Cool opened to $17,580 from a single location.
The top twelve movies this weekend grossed a total of $94.6 million, a 7% increase from this same weekend last year when Crazy Rich Asians topped the box office for the second weekend in a row and the sixth-biggest haul ever for a weekend in this time frame.