RankTitleDomestic Gross (Weekend)Worldwide Gross (Cume)Week #Percentage ChangeBudget1Men in Black International$28,500,000$102,200,0001N/A$110M2The Secret Life of Pets 2$23,800,000$154,544,3902-49.0%$80M3Aladdin (2019)$16,712,000$724,846,3144-32.3%$183M4Dark Phoenix$9,005,000$204,267,3502-72.6%$200M5Rocketman$8,800,000$133,142,7253-36.3%$40MNotable Box Office StoriesMen in Black International - Men in Black International, the attempt to relaunch the once super popular film franchise sans Will Smith and TLJ, opened to a very weak $28.5M domestic at #1 this weekend. While that's not nearly as bad as say Dark Phoenix (see below) that's still super rough for a major relaunch of a wanna-be franchise that cost over $100M to market and had a seemingly huge ad campaign. It seems this is part of a general Sony strategy of trying desperately to relaunch the few working franchises they have. Look at the way Ghostbusters was handled. Sony put a lot of marketing power into fighting back against the negative perceptions of the film and trying to prove how vital and important then film was and then it bombed and they said "oh never mind here's a reboot from the son of the original director". MIBI (great acronym) is definitely another notch in that.Men in Black International (cont.) - For one taking two leads from a more popular series is a key eyebrow raise. But more than anything it just felt going in to MIBI this existed because it sold well on a corporate earnings call. "Great news everyone, we have an exciting fresh take on the popular Men in Black franchise". I think it's not too hard to see why this failed, it was a gamble that a major corporation thought was a surefire hit. Whether it's more the brand or the man, Will Smith continues to do pretty well for himself with Aladdin about to cross $750M worldwide. And without him and TLJ I don't know how many people would care. Lackluster trailers certainly don't help either and ultimately to me and many this felt like corporate homework. Go see MIBI in theaters and get $5 in Playstation store credit. Now eat the MIBI branded popcorn. Eat it!Shaft (2019) - Who's the man who's film just opened to #6 with a terrible $8.3M? ...it...it's Shaft. come on don't make me do the whole song parody thing. Yeah the rather odd franchise of Shaft is one of the more strange in film history as the original film did in fact have two sequels but then it morphed into something...else. The original film is easily the most famous of the blaxploitation movement of the 70s, with Shaft (played by Richard Roundtree) being a symbol for black empowerment and general badassery. However two sequels, Shaft's Big Score and Shaft in Africa, failed to garner the same level of attention and it felt like the series was one purely of the 70s. But in 2000 director John Singleton rebooted the Shaft brand with lead Samuel L. Jackson and surprisingly made it a direct sequel to Shaft, with SLJ playing the nephew of Shaft. The results were a poorly received film but one that did pretty well, with $21M opening and ended up at $100M worldwide.Shaft (2019) (cont.) - The same could not be said here which again adds a new Shaft, this time Shaftson played by Jessie Usher, while still maintaining the first two Shafts. I'm tired of the word shaft now. The results were far far worse and despite a healthy ad campaign the attention was just not there. I think this is just a case of a franchise just being too damn old for folks to really want to see it. The original film is almost 50 years old and the reboot is almost 20 years old. The 2000 film did well but back then it was commenting on a 29 year old film, and we've seen with modern successful reboots that the magic sweet spot for nostalgia is in that 20 - 30 year old range. The hilariously bad Shaft twitter certainly didn't help (definitely go through that for some /r/comedyheaven level memes) but ultimately in a summer already done with needless franchises is all that shocking a reboot this late to the game is met with such disinterest. Oh and to top it all off the film was sold to Netflix for international distribution so it's probably made up the $35M budget before it was even released. Don't you just love the industry? Boy I'm cynical today.Late Night - Even non franchise fair is having a rough go of it as the indie comedy Late Night failed to garner much interest this weekend opening weak at #9 with $5.1M. The film written and starring Mindy Kaling was well reviewed during the festival circuit and certainly feels like the kind of film that film critics pine more for. A good comedy starring women and produced by a person of color. Yet still it seems that audiences just don't care enough to go out there. And in this case I really feel the shadow of streaming. I like Kaling and the co-lead Emma Thompson. It's playing at a theater I go to with AMC A-List so there's no real monetary invest for me beyond the gas to drive there. But still I'm busy and I just know this will eventually be on streaming. This is not to excuse myself for being part of the problem (it is but that's not all) but to say there's millions of those stories playing out every weekend. When entertainment becomes as easy as turning on a device and clicking a few buttons the prospect of including all those other steps to get to the theater becomes tedious. And so films like Late Night suffer. Also it's about Late Night comedy, one of increasingly irrelevant forms of entertainment out there. Is it that shocking people aren't clamoring to see that?Random thoughts - ...are we at a turning point in cinema history right now? Is this a moment that 20 years later we look back and say, this is when things broke before they were rebuilt/changed? What is happening to franchise filmmaking right now? Each week this summer seems to bring a new DOA franchise entry, from all different studios on all different genres and each one keeps failing. On the one hand it could just be this is a bad summer season which I think is fair. Men in Black International, Shaft, Secret Life of Pets 2, Godzilla: KOTM, and Dark Phoenix all had middling to bad reviews and were generally not super well received by the general public either. Bad movies making bad money isn't rocket science but it's also not the norm. Think of the heyday of the Transformers, where terrible film after terrible film kept making insane money. But then that series finally lost the ability to just shit out money and now even its best reviewed entry, Bumblebee, ends up being its lowest grossing.Random thoughts (cont.) - And look I'm also not a fool to see that there are things that are working. The most successful franchise of all time, the MCU, had the 2nd biggest film domestically and internationally with Avengers: Endgame before the summer season began and will have a follow-up with Spider-man: Far From Home in a few weeks that is tracking at $150M+ opening. Toy Story 4 is poised to potentially become the biggest animated film of all time. Aladdin is doing well, almost certainly will pass $800M worldwide and even if Lion King is a literal 2hr dumpster fire it will certainly pass $1B worldwide. But notice something about those films, yeah all owned by Disney. And not even Disney/Fox, just Disney. That just makes the balance more off-kilter. If only one studio is making a profit that means the industry has become even more unstable and will continue towards less interesting material until it busts.Random thoughts (cont.) - Look I'm not pining for the days when garbage franchise could shit out whatever and make a buck despite the quality. I like a world where China rejects Dark Phoenix but loves Capernaum, a Lebanese art movie that made over $50M in China. And this could just be a weak summer but I feel like more and more I've been saying this could just be a weak summer/winter/fall/spring. Star Wars now has flops and needs retooling. Disney remakes now have flops. A mainstay X-Men movie with a massive cast opens below an M Night Shyamalan superhero movie that's a sequel to an off-shoot of a 19 year old movie. Shit is out of control off-balance and it's only a matter of time before the industry finds new hits or has to go through another New Hollywood era or just dissolve away into a series of TV shows and webseries, making media even more fragmented than it is. And again I don't know if that's a bad thing. I'll take a lot more limited series like Big Little Lies, Chernobyl, and When They See Us over Men in Black International and Secret Life of Pets 2. Or hell more John Wicks, lower budget mid-tier genre franchises that don't feel the need to dazzle, because audiences cannot be dazzled anymore by effects. I think the real test will be Avatar 2. If even James Cameron cannot crack the franchise fatigue code, I think the industry needs to properly have a collective heart attack and massively revaluate. I don't think we are over the edge, but the edge seems to be coming closer and closer.Films Reddit Wants to FollowThis is a segment where we keep a weekly tally of currently showing films that aren't in the Top 5 that fellow redditors want updates on. If you'd like me to add a film to this chart, make a comment in this thread.TitleDomestic Gross (Weekly)Domestic Gross (Cume)Worldwide Gross (Cume)BudgetWeek #Captain Marvel$251,897$426,525,952$1,127,892,604$152M15Avengers: Endgame$7,408,419$830,491,359$2,742,491,359$356M8Pokémon Detective Pikachu$5,086,362$140,788,081$420,288,081$150M6John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum$11,263,907$148,626,905$276,126,905$55M5Notable Film ClosingsTitleDomestic Gross (Cume)Worldwide Gross (Cume)BudgetUs$175,005,930$254,553,842$20MHow to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World$160,799,505$519,586,035$129MUnplanned$18,108,952$18,108,952$6MAs always r/boxoffice is a great place to share links and other conversations about box office news.Also you can see the archive of all Box Office Week posts at r/moviesboxoffice (which have recently been updated).My Letterboxd: http://bit.ly/2rSmMyn via /r/movies http://bit.ly/2WLJWTV
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