Good holds for both SUPERMAN and JURASSIC, but this is a DOA Summer weekend if there ever was one, with two revivals nobody asked for bombing big-time.
Maybe they could have called it I DON'T CARE WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER.
SATURDAY AM: DC Studios and Warner Bros’ Superman is coursing to a second weekend of $57M, which chance for upside. That’s an ease of -54%, a second weekend percentile decline on par with Deadpool & Wolverine, and better than the second weekend superhero holds we’ve seen YTD, Thunderbolts (-56%) and Captain America: Brave New World (-68%).
The new stuff isn’t really impressive. Paramount Animation’s Smurfs is coming in at $12M, which is better than expected (there was a fear the blue guys and gal would get crushed in the single digits). Again, it’s an international and consumer products play. No one was going into this thinking they were going to re-invent the wheel and soar these grosses into some rebooted stratosphere. The movie cost a net $58M before P&A. The Rihanna starring Smurfs gets a B+, which is the lowest CinemaScore in the series of four films to date, the last one, The Lost Village, received the franchise’s only A.
Despite any heralding of profit by Sony on I Know What You Did Last Summer with a net production cost of $18M, $13M-$14M opening isn’t a win. It doesn’t indicate any kind of revived interest in this ’90s fave property. Some rivals are betting the movie comes in lower, like $12M, but the revival here is bound for the lowest opening in the theatrical pic franchise 27 years later. That’s not the grand plan with these revived horror genres. Sony was richer in their reboot of 28 Years Later debuting to $30M, and currently at $68.7M. Snarked one film finance source about Summer, “It didn’t feel like there was any stickiness in the marketing materials.” In regard to CinemaScore, I Know What You Did Last Summer gets a C+, the lowest in the series next to the 1997 original’s B-, and the 1998 sequel’s B. Sure, a sequel can be pulled off at a low cost, but with a depreciating scale of grosses.
Standing strong above the new stuff in second is Universal’s third weekend of Jurassic World Rebirth with $21.5M at 3,854. The Gareth Edwards directed movie dips -47% with a running cume by Sunday of $274.2M.