The good news is that ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows’ took the #1 spot in its opening weekend with $35.25 million. The bad news is, unfortunately, that was over $30M less than 2014’s ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ opened with– $65.5M. This was despite ‘Out of the Shadows’ getting much better reviews and, by all accounts, being a much better movie. Unfortunately, this is an instance where the first movie was such a disappointment to viewers that they didn’t return for the superior sequel, which is unfortunate.
Last week’s champ, ‘X-Men: Apocalypse’ fell to #2, taking in and additional $22.3M, down 66%. No telling why people are NOT going to see it, since there’s no way to poll them, but the film is performing well overseas, with its global total now at $402.5M.
In a smart counter-programming move, Warner Brothers’ romantic drama ‘Me Before You’ starring ‘Game of Thrones’ Emilia Clarke and ‘The Hunger Games’ Sam Claflin drew in the female crowd, to the tune of $18.27M. When you add in the $7.7M it took in overseas, the movie has already made back its $20M budget. And with few other female-skewing movies arriving for the foreseeable future, this film may prove to have staying power.
Here is the breakdown:
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows (Paramount) – $35.25M
- X-Men: Apocalypse (20th Century Fox) – $22.32M
- Me Before You (Warner Brothers) – $18.27M
- Alice Through The Looking Glass (Disney) – $10.69M
- The Angry Birds Movie (Sony) – $9.77M
Next week sees the domestic release of ‘Warcraft’ which has already taken in $69.2M overseas. The cast is currently in China promoting the CGI/mo-cap film where the film opens on Wednesday and is expected to do phenomenally well. In the US however, the reviews have been savage with ‘Warcraft’ currently ranking a rank 19% on Rotten Tomatoes.
Also opening next week is the magician heist sequel ‘Now You See Me 2’ and horror sequel ‘The Conjuring 2’.
Overall, it’s a tepid lineup, but theater goers may push ‘Warcraft’ to the top spot just in search of something new.
Things will really heat up the week after that, when Disney/Pixar’s ‘Finding Dory’ should make short work of the competition, including the Dwayne Johnson/Kevin Hart comedy ‘Central Intelligence’.
Check back to see how things pan out!
