Box Office Week: The grand experiment has seemingly failed as Tenet drops to $4.7M on its third weekend, scoring just $36M domestic in its first three weeks. Meanwhile Mulan fairs poorly in China, dropping 71% on its second weekend making only $6.5M.

RankTitleDomestic Gross (Weekend)Worldwide Gross (Cume)Week #Percentage ChangeBudget1Tenet$4,700,000$239,100,0003-29.9%$225M2The New Mutants$1,600,000$35,009,5894-23.4%$100M3Infidel$1,500,000$1,500,0001N/A$6M4Unhinged$1,300,000$27,713,9136-14.3%$33M5The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run$210,000$4,241,1036-30%$60MNotable Box Office StoriesTenet - Tenet more like...tens of millions of people don't go to the movies right now. Ehhh? Hey at least this will be the last write up for a while haters! Anyways Tenet continues to underwhelm dropping to $4.7M on its third weekend. That's not exactly promising that the film has just now squeaked by $35M domestic, the equivalent of a pretty weak opening for the film in the nice timeline. Tenet was supposed to be on its third weekend above $10M, or maybe even growing by this point. Even worse, it's come out that the first $20M weekend was hyper inflated by Warner Bros, using advanced previews a full week ahead of time to bump those numbers up higher, and the actual opening weekend gross was closer to $9M. So if Tenet hasn't scored a single weekend above $10M and continues to fall, it's really not looking like a majority of Americans are ready to see films in theaters again, at least not in the numbers that are necessary for success.Tenet - Overseas the film continues to perform better passing $200M worldwide, which shows that Hollywood films that are aiming for a more foreign play (that aren't called Mulan) could do pretty well and just eat the costs of domestic losses through either VOD sales or a weak domestic run. This could mean good news for say Bond fans and No Time to Die, as Bond films tend to make around 75% of their gross overseas. Still domestic is where Hollywood has the biggest share and many properties rely on a healthy domestic gross to combat a possibly weaker overseas reaction. So it was telling that Warner Bros, who pushed Tenet so hard to be in theaters, quickly after the true numbers for Tenet came in quickly moved Wonder Woman yet again. Let's face it if even the studio that wants to be the savior of cinema gives up so quickly, it's really not a good sign that America is ready to go back. And with the death toll for COVID now passing 200K in the US, I don't see that changing anytime soon.Mulan (2020) - Ohhhhh Mulan, what joy you give the Disney doubters out there. What a weird, strange, awkward and rough trip it's been and for this? Opening in China to just $23M last week, Mulan dropped a staggering 71% this week to make just $6.5M. That's pretty damn bad, especially since the film clearly bent over backwards to please China. The original Disney animated film was famously rejected by many Chinese audiences for its westernization of a famous Chinese folk hero. It was clear through the many changes to the story and the new style of wuxia inspired action that Mulan was a more direct ploy to the Chinese market. And with bending over backwards came the legitimate criticism that came with that ploy. First was the lead of the film Yifei Liu who spoke in support of the oppressive Hong Kong police force in their brutal crackdown of pro-democracy protests. But even more stunning was the discovery that the credits thanked leaders and organizations in Xinjiang Province, a place and people known for the ongoing cultural genocide of Uyghur peoples. So all that bad press now means China has forbidden ANY discussion of the film in Chinese news media. Wow Disney, you pissed of pretty much everyone for the same Chinese gross as Men in Black International.Mulan (2020) - Now the other big question reigning over Mulan is how it did on VOD, with this wild ploy of putting the option to buy only on Disney+ and for a whopping $30, which is $10 more than the standard industry price that has settled during the pandemic. Well it's hard to say, since there are no concrete numbers. Forbes estimates the film scored around $95M in sales while 7Park Data has the highest estimates claiming $260M. Either number is pretty dang good for VOD, especially since Disney does not have to share a dime with those dang distributors and theaters. Still even if the highest estimates are right it still is not enough to cover the production budget plus marketing. That was supposed to be China's job, but now that ship as sailed and sunk. And who knows if there will be backlash when parents found out they paid $30 just to have three-month exclusive access to the film, as it will be available with the regular monthly subscription price in December. All this to say that this is one of Disney's more notable and frustrating blunders.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.As always r/boxoffice is a great place to share links and other conversations about box office news.My Letterboxd: https://ift.tt/2Q79jjT via /r/movies https://ift.tt/32QnQWF