Friday Box Office Analysis
By Kim Hollis
July 14, 2018
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Yes, the Hotel Transylvania franchise is back once again, and this time the gang is on a summer vacation. I mean, obviously monsters want to take a luxury cruise. It's totally believable .The film that features the typical Sandler gang (Sandler, David Spade, Kevin James, Andy Samberg) plus Joe Jonas and Selena Gomez earned $16.7 million yesterday. Really, it makes sense that it would perform decently, since the last real family film in theaters was Incredibles 2 in June, and it's already up to about $525 million.
That $16.7 million is larger than both the first and second films in the series earned. Those films both performed solidly for Sony, earning $148.3 million $169.7 million respectively. By the way, the $16.7 million for Hotel Transylvania included $2.6 million from Thursday night previews. Under any circumstance, since it's a family film released on a non-holiday weekend, it should hold up quite well on Saturday and Sunday. I'd look for right around $50 million here.
In second place we have the fairly disappointing debut for Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson's Skyscraper. Looking as ludicrous as you might imagine for a film described as Die Hard on a Skyscraper with an Amputee Hero, it managed $9.3 million yesterday, with $2 million from Thursday night shows. I'd give it a weekend total of $25 million, half what Hotel Transylvania 3 should make. Since Skyscraper's budget was $125 million and Hotel Transylvania 3's was $80 million, one of those is A LOT better than the other. As for The Rock, this is no big deal for his career. He's one of those performers who has some ups and downs. He's got his Fast and the Furious spinoff Hobbs & Shaw coming up as well as the Disney project Jungle Cruise, so look for the upswing to come quickly.
The extremely well reviewed Sorry to Bother You is in seventh place with $1.5 million in 805 venues. The Annapurna Pictures release featuring Lakeith Stanfield, Tessa Thompson, Armie Hammer, Terry Crews, and a bunch of other awesome people will earn about $5 million this weekend and could be one of the sleeper stories of the summer.