Monday 4 September 2017

27. Movie Money 04/09/2017



Well Labour Day weekend 2017 for the US came, and rather than give the film industry a much-needed assist, it proved to be one of the worst weekends of the year thus far. The holiday did provide something of a push to the films of the weekend, giving #1 movie 'Hitman's Bodyguard' an additional $2.8m for a four day total of $13.3m. The rest of the top 5, however, couldn't even muster $10m, with 'Annabelle Creation' coming the closest with $9.3m.

That means, cumulatively, the top 5 of the US domestic box office, over the course of the 4 day weekend, brought in $42.8m. Less than the budget of the emoji movie. Why did this happen? Well, August has never been a hotbed for film releases. It's the end of the summer, beginning of fall, and not many studios experience a lot of success with the films they put out.

The thing about that is, that's a trend that had been coming to an end as of recent. Guardians of the Galaxy cleaned house in August of 2014, and so did Suicide Squad last year. Reason being, August is typically such a dead period for film, they had nothing to compete against them. Contrast that to this year, when for the last three weeks, the biggest films were a horror movie, and an R rated action comedy, neither of which are known to draw the huge audiences that a PG-13 popcorn flick might've.

Hitman's Bodyguard certainly has made much more than it would've thanks to the dry period.

If only films like 'Alien Covenant' or 'War for the Planet of the Apes' had opened up in August, rather than in the shadow of huge Marvel movies, like 'Guardians of the Galaxy 2' for 'Alien Covenant', and 'Spider-Man Homecoming' for 'War for the Planet of the Apes'. Maybe then you'd be hearing more about the future of those franchises.

That's all for this weeks report. You can listen to the podcast below to hear that, and our breakdown of the summer so far at the box office.

Download | RSS


0 comments: