Dwayne Johnson‘s Skyscraper falls flat at the box office.
The biggest movie at the box office this weekend was Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation, the third in the Adam Sandler animated franchise. Ironically, it’s also the only place to watch a Sandler movie outside of Netflix, where he’s still making projects as part of a vast production deal.
The movie made $44 million, which hit analysts expectations. It’s almost exactly what the first movie made in its opening weekend and about $4 million less than the sequel’s opening weekend.
For Sony, the Hotel Transylvania series is a pretty smart business decision. It costs less to make than a Pixar film, and they turn into a significant profit. Reviews for the third film have been mixed (59 percent on Rotten Tomatoes), and for the third consecutive time, the film earned an A- from Cinemascore.
Second place this weekend goes to Ant-Man and The Wasp, which fell 63 percent in its second weekend and earned $28.1 million. After ten days, the movie has grossed $128 million at the box office, which puts it well ahead of the first movie, which had made only $106 million after ten days.
The biggest story of the day is the fact that Dwayne Johnson’s Skyscraper fell flat in the box office. Early projections put the movie between $40 to $60 million, but the film failed to meet even the lowest of expectations. Skyscraper earned a $25 million debut weekend, one of the few significant movies of the summer to fall short of expectations. Box-office analysts will likely spend the next few days wondering why the movie didn’t do well, and the leading theory is that people are tired of The Rock. Skyscraper is his third movie since December and his fifth film since April 2017, and as famous and admired Dwayne Johnson is, that might be too many movies for the actor in such a short period.
But, it could arguably be the movie itself. The movie Skyscraper was an original movie and not a sequel, which is harder to sell to audiences. On top of that, the critics gave mixed reviews. The film had a 50 percent on Rotten Tomatoes and audiences were not too impressed giving it a B+ cinemascore.
Dwayne Johnson has three movies set for 2019 and will Skyscraper director Rawson Marshall Thurber for Red Line in 2020. So expect to see Dwayne Johnson bounce back in the box office with his upcoming Disney movie Jungle Cruise, which is now filming in Atlanta, Georgia.
Incredibles 2, the highest grossing animated film of all time, added another $14.5 million in its fifth week, and it’s now earned $534 million. Jurassic World: the Fallen Kingdom also added $14 million in its fourth weekend, bringing its total to $361 million. The First Purge made $9.5 million, and after ten days, the Blumhouse production has now earned $50 million on a $13 million budget.
Next week, Denzel Washington’s Equalizer 2 hits theaters and will compete against Meryl Streep and Cher’s Mamma Mia 2 as well as the horror sequel Unfriended: Dark Web.
Related:
- After Fox Deal, Disney Will Control Nearly Half of the Domestic Box Office
- Georgia Filmed ‘Ant-Man and The Wasp’ Dominates the Box Office
- Georgia-Filmed Movies Continue to Dominate the Box Office
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