Weekend Estimates: Mummy’s $32 Million Debut No Match for Wonder Woman
June 11, 2017
There are precious few crumbs of comfort to be found from Universal’s launch of The Mummy this weekend. The studio is projecting a $32.2 million opening this weekend from 4,035 theaters. That will be a fairly distant second to Wonder Woman, which is expected to earn about $57.1 million. Even the bright news—that this is Tom Cruise’s biggest global opening weekend—comes with an asterisk.
Certainly, the global numbers look much better than the US, with Universal pegging the weekend international gross at $141.8 million. In all, the film will earn $174 million globally, according to the studio, including an excellent $52.2 million in China. The studio has claimed, correctly within the “letter of the law,” that this is Tom Cruise’s biggest global opening, ahead of War of the Worlds, which made about $167.4 million worldwide on its opening weekend in 2005. But there are two big caveats: War of the Worlds was released 12 years ago, and made more than The Mummy after adjusting for inflation; and Mission: Impossible—Rogue Nation was rolled out over several weeks globally, and its combined opening weekends from all territories was in excess of $180 million. In particular, because Rogue Nation wasn’t released in China until over a month after its US launch, it never had a big headline global weekend, but there’s no question that The Mummy isn’t doing as well as that film overall.
All of which throws Universal’s nascent Dark Universe into a bit of grey area. The studio has only formally announced Bride of Frankenstein, with a February 14, 2019 release date, and that film is still in pre-production, so there’s an opportunity for them to do a complete re-think. However, there’s still a compelling case to be made for building a franchise around their “Monster” movies, and it seems likely they will continue in some form. In general, the success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe has perhaps caused the studios to get too enamored of the idea of building a series of films with interlocking plots and characters. A more loose-knit group of films that happen to be in the same universe, and use that to their benefit when it makes sense, but don’t contrive to jam a bunch of teasers for other movies into the plot-line out of cynical commercialism, might be the way to go.
In brighter news this weekend, Wonder Woman’s second weekend decline of 45%, taking it to $57.1 million, is very impressive in this day and age, and classes the film as an outright success for Warner Bros. and the DC Universe. It is, surprisingly (to me at least), the worst-performing film in the franchise after 10 days in release, but all the other films so far have fallen by between 65% and 70% in their second outings.
Captain Underpants is also doing well this weekend, with its $12.3 million representing a 48% drop from its opening. Family movies tend to hold up better, so this counts more as a solid performance than anything spectacular.
Other new nationwide releases this weekend are looking uniformly dismal. It Comes at Night is doing best, relatively speaking, with $6 million from 2,533 theaters. Megan Leavey is headed for a very disappointing $3.7 million from 1,956 locations. My Cousin Rachel will pick up $954,000 from 523 theaters.
In limited release, however, Beatriz at Dinner is clocking up great numbers, with Roadside Attractions expecting $150,160 from five theaters, for an average in excess of $30,000. They note that it out-performed Wonder Woman at the Landmark in LA.
- All-time highest-grossing films worldwide
- Wonder Woman comparisons
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- Pirates of the Caribbean box office history
- Marvel Cinematic Universe box office history
- The Mummy comparisons
- Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie comparisons
- It Comes At Night comparisons
- Megan Leavey comparisons
- Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales comparison chart
- Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 comparison chart
Filed under: Weekend Estimates, Wonder Woman, The Mummy, Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie, Megan Leavey, My Cousin Rachel, It Comes at Night, Beatriz at Dinner, Pirates of the Caribbean, Marvel Cinematic Universe, DC Extended Universe, Tom Cruise