So that’s $120 million minimum bottom line expense.
#WARCRAFT 2 BOX ART PLUS#
Its reported budget climbed over $90 million plus some $30 million in marketing costs. Yet it seems likely a dicier prospect at this point. “NYSM2” also received a good (A-) score and held up best among the three openers yesterday. Still, precedent suggested it should have been expected to do at least this well, at least by norms as recent as two years ago. Its budget doubled to $40 million, and it should show some overseas strength. “Conjuring” came with a better than usual memories of its predecessor, and its Cinemascore of A- was much above most horror films. Recent horror falls are somewhere between “Insidious 2” (+300%) and the more recent “Purge 2” (-11%).
#WARCRAFT 2 BOX ART FULL#
So celebrating that “Conjuring 2” came close and “NYSM2” is an improvement over recent sequels doesn’t tell the full story. A survey of first sequels over the past decade or so shows that on average their initial weekends surpassed their originals by 36%, and in a majority of cases passed the total domestic run gross, though by a lesser margin. Sequels invariably cost more (talent prices go up, profit participation is sometimes higher). Studios don’t finance an initial sequel expecting to gross less than the initial one. Most sequels drop somewhere between “X-Men: Apocalypse,” which fell a relatively small amount from its predecessors, and the disastrous “Alice Through the Looking Glass.” Again, some reactions are that this is positive news and Lionsgate made a smart bet. Hardly bad, particularly for a sequel, and a better hold than most recent sequels. Give Warners (and its production arm New Line) credit for nearly equaling the take of 2013 original magic caper “Now You See Me (with no adjustment for price increases). Throw in that three films usually have higher combined marketing costs than one, and the shortfall becomes more apparent for their studios. And that smash surpassed its production cost (only a small part of the financial equation, but still a benchmark) by nearly $60 million in its first three days. That’s less than half of what “Jurassic World” did on its own. Thus this weekend three films with a combined production cost of $300 million, all boasting some legitimate chance to appeal to domestic moviegoers, combined grossed under $100 million. It’s one weekend with intervening factors, so it’s not a panic moment.īut with no film as big on the horizon, despite several promising upcoming releases (Disney’s “Finding Dory” should thrive next week), the summer is shaping up as falling short of both last year’s and the preceding months of 2016 where it appeared box office was thriving. So this weekend was never going to come close. Last year saw the mid-June (not always a prime date, but Steven Spielberg over the decades has tended to favor it) release of “Jurassic World.” Its opening weekend total of $208 million was the high point of last summer, as was its total gross. The Jungle Book (Buena Vista) Week 9 Last weekend #9 Captain America: Civil War (Buena Vista) Week 6 Last weekend #6 Alice Through the Looking Glass (Buena Vista) Week 3 Last weekend #4
#WARCRAFT 2 BOX ART MOVIE#
The Angry Birds Movie (Sony) Week 4 Last weekend #5
Me Before You (Warner Bros.) Week 2 Last weekend #3 X-Men: Apocalypse (20th Century Fox) Week 3 Last weekend #2
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows (Paramount) Week 2 Last weekend # Now You See Me 2 (Lionsgate) NEW – Cinemascore: A- Metacritic: 48 est.