RankTitleDomestic Gross (Weekend)Worldwide Gross (Cume)Week #Percentage ChangeBudget1Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw$25,400,000$332,613,7802-57.7%$200M2Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark$20,800,000$20,800,0001N/A$28M3The Lion King (2019)$20,000,000$1,334,603,8264-48.1%$260M4Dora and the Lost City of Gold$19,500,000$1,075,477,9821N/A$50M5Once Upon a Time in Hollywood$11,600,000$108,031,3703-42.0%$90MNotable Box Office StoriesFast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw - So last week I was out because work was just......sorry done with my existential angst. Anyways let's talk large slabs of meat punching. Hobbs & Shaw was #1 for the second weekend in a row with an underwhelming $25.3M domestic. Hobbs & Shaw is a fascinating experiment in brand management, something of a concession for the fighting parties of a major franchise as well as a big step in a new direction. It's no secret Rock and Vin despise each other and this shared custody branching off of the franchise will allow Rock to keep rocking and Vin to keep mi familia-ing. But it seems that Rock and co may have overstated how much "Fast & Furious Presents" would allow Rock to keep the massive money train all on him. While H&S debuted last week to the worst opening weekend for the franchise since 2006's Best Picture winner Fast & Furious: Tokyo Drift, it is an August release and August releases are prime for the longtail, as major films compete to be the one to hit that sweet Guardians of the Galaxy spot where you open okay but keep churning out money for months. But this weekend seems to prove that this film may not have the juice as it dropped 57.7%. While that's similar to Guardians' 52% drop on its second weekend, that film opened $35M higher.Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw (cont.) -This is also to note that internationally the film has just crossed $330M. Decent but again we don't live in an age where decent id enough for a $200M blockbuster that's EXPECTED to cross $500M in two weekends. And no, I'm not saying Universal is packing up the goods and cancelling the whole wild Fast & Furious experience. Or even that its killing Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw & Hobbs - Revengeance: Age of Innocence anytime soon. More proof that brand management is really damn hard and even with a killer two ampersand title and the biggest movie star in the world you may not tap into that sweet surreal vein that can be so fickle and seems to constantly be moving. Perhaps I'll eat my word when H&S closes but for now, it just stands as a weird not all that winning experiment. But hey it came from a series built on wild experimentation and change. And also terribly clunky titles. Some things should never die!Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark - It must have been so annoying to hack box office people that Scary Stories only made it to #2 with $20.8M. You know they wanted to do a classic "scares up" pun but does #2 justify it? Anyways the adaptation of the popular children's spooky scary book was a rather interesting play of the four major new wide releases this week. August is a rather strange time for horror, too early for the more lucrative fall lead-in to Halloween and too close to the summer months to really fit in. But the value of this film is definitely in it coming in just two weeks before the majority of students return to school and this was intended as a straight to tweens/teens horror film with its PG-13 rating and young Stranger Things/IT/ummm-I-guess-Riverdale cast instead of appealing straight for that sweet nostalgia. In that regard the film did alright as 44% of the audience was under the age of 25. But the film got middling reviews from critics and a not great C rating on Cinemascore. Of course this could be the case of generational difference as older folks might be more frustrated with the film pushing aside the classic stories as part of a larger overall narrative while younger folks unfamiliar with the classic spooks might find it fun. Next weekend will tell sure (same goes for all of these films I'm discussing this week) but with a cool $20M budget this one should end up just fine no matter what.Dora and the Lost City of Gold - I appreciate we live in a time where a $50M Dora the Explorer movie exists and we all go "oh yeah...uh-huh of course that exists". But hey it's real and now we have to talk about another film doing some weird bit of semi-satirical take on sincere pop culture ephemera. This is to say it opened at #4 with $17M. The film pushes Dora in to high school but still maintains a fun family adventure vibe. Critics weren't insane for it but did appreciate the charm and style. However audiences that did see Dora dug it a lot, giving it an A on Cinemascore. A weird kid friendly bit of tongue in cheek humor based on a Spanish language program for very small children is ummmm a choice so I don't find the $17M opening too tragic as it's just a bit too strange to justify a massive opening. However again with that insane $50M budget it does really need to hold very well in the next coming weeks before school starts to justify costs. So again the next few weeks will really define this film's future and also the course for our continuously crumbling society. Make the $80M Street Shark movie. Just do it, let's get it over with.The Art of Racing in the Rain - Have we reached peak dog movie or have we reached peak "have we reached" articles because that one could actually exist? Whatever the case the case for the death of the dog movie might be The Art of Racing in the Rain (TAORITR for...short?) which opened poorly at #6 to $8.1M. The film based on the popular book by Garth Stein was something of a book blockbuster but over a decade ago in 2008. And perhaps also in a year of tons of dog movies already this just fell to the wayside. Not mention the book itself is a strange fit for this genre as it's far more lyrical and meditative than the wacky Josh Gad semi-spiritual stylings of the A Dog's franchise. Whatever the reason the critics were not fans but audiences gave it a solid A- on Cinemascore. So while it could hold well and carries a smallish $20M budget, it is too far down the pack (boo) and with another FIVE new wide releases coming next week I don't expect it to find its legs . Fuzzy, cute, adroable legs (double boo). Also this is random, but Wikipedia writers did we really need 2,000 words for the plot of this movie? Really?The Kitchen - When a film that has a powerhouse trio like Elizabeth Moss, Tiffany Hadish, and serious mode Melissa McCarthy and it doesn't have reviews until the day of release and it's dropped off at the back end of the summer months...yeah you know something is truly rotten. And indeed critics heralded it as "the worst of the year" and "just awful" and it opened to a terrible #7 with $5.5M. The film is the first directorial effort from Andrea Berloff who wrote Straight Outta Compton and Sleepless. It seems Andrea either did not have the same abilities behind the camera or the film was stripped to ribbons in editing as most critics found the film entirely impossible to follow. Of course WB could tell the stinker they had on their hand as the film was barely marketed and came in on one of the more competitive yet potentially friendly times of the year. It's just an unfortunate affair, a film that had promise in front and behind the camera but some unknown series of events just completely ruined any chance this film ever had.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 #Avengers: Endgame$623,433$857,916,768$2,795,092,335$356M16Pokémon Detective Pikachu$122,132$144,040,583$431,440,583$150M14John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum$401,710$170,462,567$320,747,690$75M13Aladdin$3,603,675$352,774,267$1,035,274,267$183M12Dark Phoenix$140,339$65,826,828$252,423,828$200M10Toy Story 4$12,277,625$419,578,368$989,978,368$200M8Spider-man: Far From Home$13,098,565$370,972,490$1,096,972,490$160M6Notable Film ClosingsTitleDomestic Gross (Cume)Worldwide Gross (Cume)BudgetDumbo (2019)$114,766,307$352,976,310$170MChild's Play (2019)$33,244,684$44,196,684$10MBooksmart$22,680,962$23,773,234$6MAnna$7,743,794$25,994,422$30MAs 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: https://ift.tt/2Q79jjT via /r/movies https://ift.tt/2YHyyhD
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