Sony’s ‘The Dark Tower’ towered over the competition… but not by much. It was an extremely lackluster weekend, pretty much signaling the end of the summer tentpole season. The odds were stacked against ‘The Dark Tower’ from the start. Ron Howard and Universal, Bad Robot and Universal had already passed on adapting the sprawling Stephen King novel with most studios feeling that the project was better suited to television than the big screen. The film got a lousy 18% Rotten Tomatoes ranking and a so-so B CinemaScore. The film won the top spot with a fairly meager $19.5 million on a $66M budget. In comparison, last year this weekend, ‘Suicide Squad’ opened with $135M.
Awards-bait ‘Dunkirk’ is still hanging in there with $17.6M, thanks to strong critical and audience reaction. To put it frankly, it’s just a damn good movie and audiences are responding. It helps that ‘Dunkirk’ isn’t like the usual summer fare, so is providing a much needed alternative to cartoons, robots, and superheroes.
‘The Emoji Movie’ is still drawing the family crowd, and ‘Girls Trip’ remains the shining beacon for comedies.
The final new entry in the Top Five is Aviron’s ‘Kidnap’ starring Halle Berry, which made $10.2M after having been shot three years ago and shelved.
Here is the breakdown:
- The Dark Tower (Sony) – $19.5M
- Dunkirk (Warner Brothers) – $17.6M
- The Emoji Movie (Sony) – $12.35M
- Girls Trip (Universal) – $11.4M
- Kidnap (Aviron) – $10.2M
Things didn’t work out for Katherine Bigelow’s ‘Detroit’, a true story about the killing of three black men in 1967 Detroit, a pivotal moment in the Civil Rights movement. Bigelow’s movies always tread dark subjects and in the past have been rewarded– ‘The Hurt Locker’, ‘Zero Dark Thirty’. ‘Detroit’ likewise has a fantastic 88% Rotten Tomatoes score and audiences that saw it have given it a great A- CinemaScore. Maybe it was the timing or marketing, but it is possible that word of mouth could help this movie rise in the weeks to come.
Next week, ‘Annabelle: Creation’ Arrives, but at this point, I have no clue how it’s going to do. Low budget horror entries have their fans, but this summer has proven repeatedly that audiences are rapidly abandoning these long-running franchises. So it’s a coin toss.
But check back and see how it does!
Source: Deadline
