Friday Estimates by The Klady Emoji
The Emoji Movie.
I haven’t even seen it and I hate it. Of course, I love Sony Animation, and somehow, my 7-year-old has a big stuffed poop on his bed, next to other characters that help him quiet down at night. (Thank GOD that this is the only poop in that bed for a number of years.) As one of the smaller operations in the game, Sony Animation pushes in less conventional directions and we should be applauding them. Seriously.
The reason we all seem to be happy to hate The Emoji Movie, even sight unseen, is that we all also knew it would be #1 at the box office whenever it opened. That’s also why they made it. It is truly “high concept,” led by a frozen yogurt-looking pile of excrement speaking the Queen’s English. Is there any better metaphor for why some people think the worst of “Hollywood”?
I wouldn’t be surprised if TEM comes close to $40m for the weekend. I keep hearing parents feeling compelled to go this weekend because the kids insist that Poop is the new Wonder Woman.
Dunkirk is holding as well as one might expect. In NolanLand, it’s another success, but it is tracking closely with Interstellar, but without Thanksgiving coming to give it a Week 4 boost. $150 million domestic seems what’s likely, which, as noted before, would be a big success in WB’s eyes. There were real fears that it would not come close close to that number.
Atomic Blonde opens dead in the middle between John Wick and John Wick 2. No doubt, Team Universal would have liked to have started with JW2, which still “only” did $92 million domestic. But… what can you do? That would have made AB a major outlier in the niche. Also, with Charlize, there will be serious hopes for a much stronger international with this film than with the Wicks. This is the first of three movies that are close variations, with Fox’s Proud Mary and the John Wick Spin-off, Ballerina, which could land in the same release window as Atomic Blonde 2: Blonder (plot preview… Lorraine goes to Grenada).
Girls Trip holds well. I’ve seen it now and a big piece of this puzzle is that the women are over 30. There will, clearly, be a Girls Trip 2. But it’s no joke that there should be a Latina Girls Trip and an Asian Girls Trip as well. It is not the greatest filmmaking. But you laugh. A lot. And I am not sure that I would have expected to laugh a women peeing on a crowd… but I didn’t know that Melissa McCarthy’s mishandling her diarrhea would earn an Oscar nomination. Each ethnic group would bring a different spice, uniquely funny, while it could also touch the heart of a longterm friendships. If other studios don’t have these in aggressive development – like set a shoot date and start casting before you have a script – they are nuts. Girls Trip feels… relaxed. And that would have to be appealing to a lot of actresses who don’t want to play off their sex appeal, but are up for real fun. Sofía Vergara, Eva Langoria, Michelle Rodriguez and Paz Vega out partying is a movie.
By the way, the true prequel to Girls Trip was the ads that Ava Duvernay directed with black female stars hanging out listening to music. And another version of this that could be huge would be (development title) Oscar Girls Trip. Imagine Amy Adams, Jennifer Lawrence, Emily Blunt and Emma Stone going on a vacation and drinking a lot of Mezcal. Would have to be directed by a not-great director… any time someone in the film starts to ACT, they need another shot and a character humiliation. And don’t forget the Indie Girls Trip with Zoe Kazan, Jenny Slate, Elizabeth Olsen, and Greta Gerwig.
Detroit arrived to a good, if not sensational reception. Opening weekend will be near 20k per screen on 20. This can go one of two ways. It can allow sampling that creates word of mouth that supports the expansion… or it can die of “It was really powerful, but I can’t ever get through that movie again” word of mouth. Zero Dark Thirty is really the exception in Kathryn Bigelow’s commercial career (and that film deserved a bigger audience and a Best Picture Oscar). So it wouldn’t be shocking to see this film end up grossing high-teens or twenties domestically and still going on to a barrelful of Oscar nods.
Box office weirdness continues…
*A kids movie about talking shit is neck and neck with Chris Nolan’s best movie…
*A movie starring Queen Latifah, Jada Pinkett Smith and two other black women looks to be the only $100 million comedy of this year’s first three quarters.
*APES may experience a -33% decline now :'(
*What is now guaranteed to be Illumination’s lowest domestic grosser in 5 years may win the worldwide box office crown this summer
*And WONDER WOMAN is now gunning for CAP:CIVIL WAR, IRON MAN 3 and THE HUNGER GAMES
I know this is old news, but I was kind of shocked when I just noticed that “Get Out” ended its domestic gross just over $175 million. I knew obviously it was a big hit, but for some reason I thought it topped out at like $125, which would still be a huge success. But $175 million, wow. It will have outgrossed Pirates 5 and Transformers 5 among others, which is insane.
Not sure why other outlets are saying Dunkirk is going to win the weekend. Seems like the kids movie that won Friday is certain to do the same on kid friendly weekend days as well.
So, can WONDER WOMAN come up with $7.1 million? Stay tuned…
>> But it’s no joke that there should be a Latina Girls Trip and an Asian Girls Trip as well. It is not the greatest filmmaking you will see.
I find this whole paragraph very odd. Is this really good enough to count as successful diversity? Are people supposed to see all 3-4 movies with basically the same story in a few small variations but with a different cast and enjoy the déja vu? Would someone shout racism when the fifth movie with a group of Inuits flops?
Or is this a new form of segregation where every group gets its own movie. If so, may somebody make a German version for me and my friends. Preferably with men instead of women, and maybe make them Bavarians, not East Germans. Thanks.
Yes, it can. And Dunkirk will do well north of $150 million. Interstellar ultimately did $188 million domestically. Dunkirk opened to (slightly) more and its first Friday to Friday drop is (slightly) less than that for Interstellar. The Thangskiving bump for Interstellar, I’d argue, is more than negated by higher numbers on matinees and weekdays during August. As well as a shorter running time. And Interstellar gave up a good proportion of its IMAX screens to Hunger Games Mockingjay in weekend 3. Dunkirk should keep most of its IMAX engagements until The Dark Tower on weekend 4, a movie which many feel looks like a loser from this distance.
I’m guessing Dunkirk gets to $200 million.
Don’t see why WW can’t do $410 million now with a re-release. By the end of this weekend it’ll be just $5 million behind TOY STORY 3 and is gaining on it now. I was expecting -40% declines from Spidey onward…wasn’t even close, with a -22% decline this weekend which may be conservative.
Now it looks like it’ll have the best multiplier of the Top 80 openers of all-time. The best summer multiplier of any movie in the Top 100 by year’s end.
The movie-going experience in 2017 continues to frustrate. I rarely see stuff in theaters any more due to talking/cell phones/substandard presentation/60 ” HDTVs and 4K. I do try to make it out for some stuff. I really want to see Valerian on a huge screen. I’m not a massive Besson fan but definitely want to see it and it’s one of those movies that just seems like it will be so much better on a giant screen. I live in Brooklyn, but it flopped, and since I didn’t get to it the first week, it will pretty much be playing only on shitty little screens now. And the damn thing just opened a week ago. Frustrating. Someone should start a website that gives info on screen sizes. I can’t find anywhere that seems to still be showing it on a nice big screen. Really don’t want to pay $20 to see Valerian on some tiny little screen, but I think I may have missed the boat. You really have to see stuff in that first week if you’re picky about screen size, because if it flops it gets relegated to some tiny screen with stains on it, and fucked-up sound, and a couple homeless dudes sleeping in the theater after the first week.
If you’ve seen Inside Out, Wreck It Ralph and The Lego Movie, you’ve already experienced over 97% of The Emoji Movie; but if you see The Emoji Movie, you’re only going to experience (as a GENEROUS estimate) about 3% of those other films.
I’ll give any movie a chance since, hell, surprises will happen (like The Lego Movie), but this thing is auto-pilot garbage.
And the kids loved it.
Just got back from Atomic Blonde, and wow what a letdown. All style and no substance. The wife was majorly disappointed as it was the one film she’d been looking forward to.
i will laugh my ass off if the shit emoji out-earns the college republican’s empty spectacle, please let this happen
ETA also re the ‘breed’ post above, this is such a weird rant but i can relate
If they do a WW Oscar push, then yeah, it’ll get a re-release plus nominations that always helps. I’m not saying whether it deserves those nominations or not, but it’s certainly zeitgeisty enough to get there. And now ET is making the case too! 🙂
The idea of self-segregating women’s films is a truly weird idea. Especially since rather than calling the white version White Girls Trip you suddenly call it Oscar Girls Trip. I know you’re being facetious and tongue-in-cheek, but the joke is what? That featuring a specific demographic in the cast is too calculating? I feel like it’s the opposite…like no executive would greenlight something just because it had people of color unless it went above and beyond in some way. So yeah, maybe the “Oscar” version can get away with mediocrity but I highly doubt the other people of color versions would. Because if they flopped, guess who would be blamed?
(Clarification: To have a project with people of color in it takes even more talent and effort just to get through to a major studio, because it is viewed as riskier by marketing people. But ultimately if it breaks through and does badly, the executive can stay blameless and even virtuous while an entire race is blamed as being not good at movies or staying away from the theater. I realized the way I said it was a bit muddy.)
@PeteB: Just got back from Atomic Blonde, and wow what a letdown. All style and no substance
Gotta admit, that staircase fight was brutal to watch. To meet it felt more like a brawl than the choreography of Wick. Thought they actually tried to pack too much twists in the end, and would have been better with a straight story. I enjoyed it though.
^Agreed. The fights were the best part. You needed Cliffs Notes by the end to figure out the story.
“Zero Dark Thirty” did not deserve a wider audience. Kathryn Bigelow is the American equivalent of Leni Riefenstahl, a propaganda artist in service to the state.
It’s telling that Annapurna went with naym-chekkin’ plus Akademee Award Winning to grab an audience for her latest round of glorifying the P.I.G.S. [An acronym that means People In Government Service.]
Rational, as always.