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Hitmans Bodyguard.jpg

Box Office Report: Worst. Weekend. Ever.

By Kayleigh Donaldson | Film | August 28, 2017 |

By Kayleigh Donaldson | Film | August 28, 2017 |


Remember how I said the North American box office was in a bit of a tough spot this Summer? Well, that didn’t improve this week. Indeed, it only worsened, as none of last week’s new releases could clear $5m in their opening weekend. That’s bad. How bad? Try ‘lowest level of revenue since the days following 9/11’ bad.

In fairness, it was a tough week outside of movie-world, and none of the new releases were major enough to warrant people leaving their houses during a hurricane, a boxing match, or screaming at Netflix over how freaking awful their beige remake of Death Note is. Instead, the biggest film of the week remained The Hitman’s Bodyguard, which took in $10m and ensured Ryan Reynolds will have some cashflow other than Deadpool to put towards his retirement fund.

Annabelle: Creation held on tight to second place with $7.4m, bringing its domestic gross to just under $80m, and Halloween is still two months away. The biggest new release of the week was Leap!, a minor animated children’s film about a ballerina with big dreams, which grossed $5m, enough to debut in 3rd place. That’ll be good enough for The Weinstein Company to breathe easy another week, as will Wind River taking in $4.4m after expanding to over 2000 theatres.

Birth of the Dragon, Blumhouse’s pseudo-biopic of Bruce Lee - the one where the protagonist is still a white dude - opened in 8th place with $2.6m, which is strong for a no-budget effort with zero promotion beyond people wondering why Bruce Lee has to be a white guy’s helpful friend in a movie of his own life that’s probably just telling a story that never happened.

Poor Logan Lucky: Whatever has stopped people from warming to Steven Soderbergh’s movie comeback, it must be pretty major, as the film’s two weeks into its release and could only pull in $4.4m, even with paltry competition. To put that into depressing perspective, the Mayweather vs. McGregor boxing match played in 481 theatres nationwide and made $2.4m, enough to place it at number 9, above The Emoji Movie. I guess people like to watch the sport with all the punching that makes all the money.

September looks set to be a stronger month for movies. IT may be a box office record breaker, festival season kicks off hard, mother! may finally answer all our questions, and we may find out if Tulip Fever even exists. We can but dream.

You can check out the rest of the box office top 10 here. What films did you see this week? Reynolds or Gosling? Do you feel the exclamation point in the title for Leap! is unnecessary? Does the fact that The Emoji Movie has made $76.4m in the USA alone frighten you? Let us know in the comments.