Weekend Box Office Report — ‘Candyman’ Overdelivers at the Box Office
We are back this week with a new box office report, and we are glad to say that the Delta variant is not scaring audiences as much as we thought it would. The studios are reporting strong numbers for the post-pandemic era, although we should also ask ourselves what these numbers would be if the Delta variant wasn’t around.
Candyman delivered a very strong $22.37M opening, surpassing projections from The Numbers ($18.8M) and Box Office Pro ($20M). Notice that this is not far behind The Suicide Squad‘s opening number of $26M or Free Guy‘s $28M. The Suicide Squad, however, had also the HBO Max simultaneous release to deal with. Free Guy did not receive a hybrid release, and while it was an original movie, it had a much larger marketing campaign and one of the biggest movie stars on the planet as the main Guy in the poster.
Candyman, however, was betrayed by its own marketing these past few weeks, and the only supporters of a strong opening were its name (it is the remake of a 1992 horror movie a good chunk of the modern audience probably hasn’t heard of) and its main actor, who is a rising star now in Hollywood (though not yet famous enough to hold a major release on his shoulders). The movie was probably supported by huge word-of-mouth, as Nia DaCosta’s remake is holding an 85% Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes. Good news for the director, who is right now shooting The Marvels, with Brie Larson.
Speaking of big actors, Free Guy continues to overperform at the box office. This summer is being a weird one indeed, and here we have this movie, which is an original blockbuster. They don’t make those anymore. And yet, the movie dropped only 26.7% from last week, bringing in $13.55M this week. Worldwide, the movie sits at $180 million on its third week of release (in the U.S., international markets’ release dates may vary). With Jungle Cruise now sitting at $187 million worldwide, Ryan Reynolds will most likely surpass Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt next week.
Speaking of the big guy, Jungle Cruise took the #4 spot this week, bringing in $5 million, which represents a 20.9% drop from last week’s number. The movie continues the precedent set by Raya and the Last Dragon, Cruella, and Black Widow of hybrid Disney releases that have huge drops from week 1 to week 2, but hold on strongly the weeks after.
You may notice that we missed the #3 spot — that went to PAW Patrol: The Movie, which proves, once again, that parents are willing to take their children to the nearest movie theater, and that if there is a genre that is not underperforming right now, it’s animated movies. PAW Patrol delivered $6.6 million on its second week, almost a 50% drop from last week.
The top 5 is rounded up by Don’t Breathe 2, one of the most awaited sequels for a 2016 movie that didn’t get nearly as much marketing as it deserved, and yet people found it and are going to see it. On a $15M budget, the movie’s already made $35 million worldwide, which means that, given its very cheap marketing campaign, it may already be turning up a profit.
Next week, Marvel Studios is delivering yet another entry in their Phase 4 slate, the second Marvel movie of the year, out of the four that the studio has promised us. As we know, the fate of the release of Eternals (currently scheduled for November) will rest upon the shoulders of Shang-Chi, out this Friday. Right now, that movie has a lot of word-of-mouth pushing for it, but not much else. Today, I wouldn’t expect more than a $45M opening weekend in the U.S., which can only be painted as a flop, even given the circumstances. But we’ll see. As the week progresses, we’ll have more accurate predictions that hopefully will go up.
Look forward to our review of Shang-Chi next weekend, plus next week’s box office report, where we might even have news about Eternals (hopefully not, or if we do, let them be good ones).
Miguel Fernández is a Spanish student that has movies as his second passion in life. His favorite movie of all time is The Lord of the Rings, but he is also a huge Star Wars fan. However, fantasy movies are not his only cup of tea, as authors like Scorsese, Fincher, Kubrick or Hitchcock have been an obsession for him since he started to understand the language of filmmaking. He is that guy who will watch a black and white movie, just because it is in black and white.
