Frankly, Medea, Tyler Perry don’t give a damn… whether critics like his movies or not. His latest, ‘Boo 2! A Madea Halloween’ has a dismal 8% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, but what else is new? While not a dazzling opening, its $21.5 million haul beat its $20M production budget and was enough to top the weekend box office. The sequel fell short of the first ‘Boo!’ which opened just one year ago. That film, the first Madea movie in three years (how did we as a culture survive the drought?), made a truly impressive $28.5M and marked a turning point for Perry’s comedies which now clearly appeal well beyond their original African American target audience. And speaking of audiences, they don’t give a damn what the critics say either, crowning ‘Boo 2!’ with an A- CinemaScore.
Disaster flick ‘Geostorm’ is indeed a disaster. Costing a flood of money to produce– over $120M, including $15M in reshoots– it earned only a light drizzle of $13M, good enough for second place. It earned a not-too-bad B- CinemaScore, but Warner Bros. seems to know it had a stinker on its hands, refusing to screen it in advance for critics (pretty much always a dead giveaway) and also didn’t open it for Thursday night previews, which is the norm with action movies… but it appears that WB was afraid that the largely young male audience would turn out, see what a clunker it was and storm social media declaring their findings. (But as stated, the audiences actually weren’t that harsh on it.)
Also… that name. ‘Geostorm’ sounds like a cheap Syfy original movie. Oh wait, it kinda is. Well, it didn’t air on Syfy, but a crappy, low-budget knockoff, ‘Geo-Disaster’ directed by the amazingly named Thunder Levin (!) hit DVD just a couple of weeks ago, on October 3rd. (Brought to you by The Asylum, the folks behind– you guessed it– the Sharknado franchise!) ‘Geostorm’ might be a chore to sit through, but with enough *ahem* adult refreshments, ‘Geo-Disaster’ could be a hoot!
True-life firefighter drama ‘Only The Brave’ should be clicking better than it is. Based on the Granite Mountain Hotshots, who fought against the 2013 Yarnell Hill Fire in Arizona, the film is tied to a philanthropic initiative, The Granite Mountain Fund, dedicated to raising money for firefighters nationwide as well as their families and communities impacted by similar catastrophes. Earlier this week, Vice President Mike Pence attended a highly-publicized screening in Washington DC. It’s got a pretty stellar cast headed by Josh Brolin with Jeff Bridges, Miles Teller, and Jennifer Connelley. And on top of that, the film has gotten great reviews, 90% on Rotten Tomatoes and those average cinemagoers that did attend, gave it an A CinemaScore.
Yet, it earned a weak $6.2M. It’s not clear why. This should really be hitting big in the Red States/American Heartland– the same folks that flocked to ‘American Sniper’ and all those low-budget faith-based movies. But for whatever reason, it’s just not.
At any rate, even with only $6.2M, ‘Only The Brave’ landed the #5 spot. #3 and #4 were returning champs ‘Happy Death Day’ and ‘Blade Runner 2049’.
- Boo 2! A Medea Halloween (Lionsgate) – $21.5M
- Geostorm (Warner Bros./Skydance) – $13M
- Happy Death Day (Universal/Blumhouse) – $9.4M
- Blade Runner 2049 (Warner Bros./Sony) – $7.3M
- Only The Brave (Sony) – $6.2M
Frozen out of the Top Five altogether was serial killer thriller ‘The Snowman’, which by all accounts, is a sloppy, rushed product. Directed by Tomas Alfredson based on the novel by Jo Nesbø, the film omitted certain essential parts of the story. It doesn’t appear that reshoots were done, so instead, Alfredson was forced to try to make this into something that actually made sense which… I guess he failed to do. It has a truly rotten Rotten Tomatoes score of 9% and audiences hated it too, with a rare D CinemaScore.
Next weekend is Halloween weekend, a notoriously slow one for the box office as most people have better things to do. Lionsgate is releasing ‘Jigsaw’ the latest part of the ‘Saw’ franchise in hopes that some movie lovers may want a last minute scare.
Will it be able to buzz its way into the Top Five? Check back and see!
Source: Deadline
