Weekend Wrap-Up

Turtles Are (Finally) Cooked, Me Before You Surprises, Popstar Flops

By John Hamann

June 5, 2016

It's like all of a sudden people realized they didn't want to see gross versions of ninja turtles.

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Over the remainder of the weekend, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows did not improve on its Friday much, and was left with a weekend take of $35.5 million. It maintains that drop from the original at around 46%, likely a devastating amount for these Turtles. Legs aren’t happening this time around, as there is way too much competition in front of it, so it won’t get the free ride the original got unless this summer continues to go in the sink. Reviews were ugly at 37% overall, and even worse from top critics at 29%. The glimmer of hope comes from the Cinemascore, as it came in at an A-, up from the original’s B. Let’s face it, that’s not going to work, and these Turtles are going to need the same result overseas as the original ($302 million). That is just not going to happen.

As the wonderful Kim Hollis mentioned in the Friday Analysis yesterday, Hollywood all of a sudden seems to have problems with sequels. In some cases, they are like Ninja Turtles, desperately not needed, useless piles of trash. However, films like this were at least born from success. In other cases, the franchise is simply manufactured from nothing – yes, like usual I’m looking at you Divergent series – as companies try and manufacture this crap. Films like Batman v Superman make money and aren’t very good, and then everyone just tries to copy the same model – repackaging crap instead of making movies.




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Second this weekend is X-Men: Apocalypse, which drops hard despite not having much competition. Sure, the Turtles are directly invading the demo, but the small gross should have reduced the impact. Days of Future Past fell 64% from $90.8 million to $32.6 million against a combined $100 million from Maleficent, A Million Ways to Die in the West and Godzilla; X-Men Apocalypse fell 66% after earning $65.8 million last weekend and only $22.3 million this weekend. X-Men First Class, which opened more in the ballpark of Apocalypse, fell 56% in weekend two. The result is abysmal for Fox, as this one will not hit $200 million domestic. It carries a production budget of $178 million, so Fox would be looking for a worldwide gross of well over a half-billion, meaning more pressure will be on the overseas gross if we’re going to see more X-Men.

Third is a small bright spot in the top ten, as Me Before You opens toward the top end of estimates, proving that moviegoers are not collectively dead. The teen/romance/death movie (it’s becoming a genre) earned a strong $18.3 million from only 2,704 screens (Turtles had 4,071). It had a venue average of $6,757 – better than X-Men Apocalypse’s $5,376. Me Before You managed to tap into that teen thing that worked for The Fault In Our Stars ($48 million opening) and Paper Towns ($12 million opening). This is a much better career step for Emilia Clarke than Terminator Genisys (and almost matched its opening weekend), as the Game of Thrones actress looks to break out.


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