It appears the late summertime blues have arrived for Hollywood. Three new films opened in theaters Friday, but it appears all of them will come in under their original weekend projections.
“Straight Outta Compton” remained at no. 1 with another $8.3 million and an incredible $93 million in just eight days. The F. Gary Gray biopic will cross the $100 million mark today and should end the weekend with close to $115 million.
Arriving at no. 2 was Gramercy Pictures' “Sinister 2” with just $4.7 million. If the sequel performs like most horror films it will have a significant Saturday drop meaning a debut in just the $10-11 million range. Considering the first “Sinister” opened to $18 million that would be pretty disappointing for Focus Features' newly resurrected genre label. Every horror flick released this summer (there have been four of them) has underperformed. While the genre has recently done well thanks to titles like “The Purge” and “The Conjuring,” historically it's rare for a horror film to play well during this season. Moviegoers are telling Hollywood studios that unless it's special they'd rather wait for the fall or winter.
“Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation” remained in third with $3.3 million and $149.4 million so far. The fifth installment in the franchise has had impressive staying power, but doesn't look like it will match “Ghost Protocol's” $209 million tally let alone hit the $200 million mark domestically.
20th Century Fox started marketing “Hitman: Agent 47” earlier than you might expect, but it didn't move the needle. The attempt to reboot the video game franchise made just $3 million on Friday for what should be a $7-8 million three-day. Considering the thriller earned just an 8% Rotten Tomatoes score, a 29 grade on Metacritic and a B Cinemascore grade, it won't be around for long.
Guy Ritchie's “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.” remained in the top five taking in $2.18 million for $21.4 million in a little over a week. We'll get a better idea on Sunday if international markets will be able to recoup the film's $75 million production budget.
Arriving in sixth was the Jesse Eisenberg and Kristen Stewart stoner action comedy “American Ultra” with just 2x million and an expected $5-6 million for the frame. Considering Lionsgate reportedly spent just $7 million to acquire the domestic rights to “Ultra” that's not disastrous, but this is one picture that will really need to perform on VOD and downloads.
Look for complete weekend estimates tomorrow on HitFix.