Film Title: Jason Bourne

The reunion of Matt Damon and director Paul Greengrass proved enticing to audiences as the fifth movie in this franchise, ‘Jason Bourne’ raced to the #1 spot at the box office, collecting $60M in its opening weekend.  This opening makes it the second highest debut of the ‘Bourne’ films, coming in behind 2007’s ‘Bourne Ultimatum’.  (Incidentally, ‘Bourne Ultimatum’ and ‘Jason Bourne’ ranks as the two highest openings of Matt Damon’s career.)

R-Rated comedy ‘Bad Moms’ opened at #3 with $23M.  The budget for this film was only $20M, so it’s already in the black and is scoring as counter-programing to the testosterone-heavy norm of summer movies.  Indeed, the majority of the audiences for this film, which stars Mila Kunis, Kristen Bell, Christina Applegate and Jada Pinkett Smith, was female, many of which were over 30.  It also accomplished a rare feat: an A CinemaScore ranking, meaning audiences loved this movie a lot more than the average summer comedy.

‘Bad Moms’ also appears to have sunk ‘Ghostbusters’, this summer’s other big female-centric comedy, which plummeted to #7 with just $9.8M in its third weekend.  Its current domestic total is around $106M, which may cause Sony to reconsider any sequels that they may have foreseen for this film.

The other biggish opening of the weekend was ‘Nerve’ which opened early on Tuesday.  But the film starring Emma Roberts and Dave Franco didn’t manage to crack the Top Five, landing at #8.  Like ‘Bad Moms’, ‘Nerve”s budget was $20M and when the early days are factored in, the movie is sitting at about $15M and should easily cover that.  It also received a positive CinemaScore of A-.

As for ‘Star Trek Beyond’, that film took an approximately 60% plunge in its sophomore weekend, but more on that in a moment.  First here is the Top Five:

  1. Jason Bourne (Universal) – $60M
  2. Star Trek Beyond (Paramount) – $24M
  3. Bad Moms (STX Entertainment) – $23M
  4. The Secret Life of Pets (Universal) – $18.2M
  5. Lights Out (Warner Brothers) – $10.8M

Now regarding ‘Star Trek Beyond’, it’s somewhat inexplicable that this movie is failing as badly as it is.  It had the second lowest opening of any ‘Star Trek’ film, coming in just ahead of ‘Star Trek: Nemesis’, despite strong reviews and positive word of mouth from those that have seen it.  With a budget of $185M, ‘Beyond’ has come in at around $105M so far.  With foreign grosses added in, the movie should break even, but this rebooted franchise might be running out of steam.

The last movie, ‘Star Trek Into Darkness‘ turned off a lot of viewers, with its overly reverential reinterpretation of ‘Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan’.  Old school Trek diehards don’t like the overly action-oriented reboots and without that loyal core audience, it seems this brand is struggling to connect to other moviegoers.

Paramount has already announced plans for a fourth neo ‘Trek’ but at this point, they may want to consider whether its even worth the trouble… and money.  ‘Nemesis’ killed any plans Paramount had to carry on its movie series with the cast of the ‘Next Generation’.  Will ‘Beyond’  do the same to the new franchise?

Next week sees the release of the highly-anticipated ‘Suicide Squad’ which is currently trending to take in over $150M in its opening weekend.  Will it make it?  Check back next week to find out!

Source: Forbes