The movie, which cost around $100 million to produce, collected just $11.4 million across the USA and Canada during its opening weekend. Sadly, the remake looks to be more of a flop than anything else and could even be considered one of the biggest flops of the summer, with a poor opening weekend both domestically and internationally, as well as very little true hype from critics or audiences.
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David Ayer’s Suicide Squad still holds the top-spot in the U.S., making an impressive $20.7m over the past weekend, while animated comedy The Secret Life Of Pets continues to impress internationally with a haul of almost $350m. “Suicide Squad” collected $20.7 million this weekend and now has grossed $262.3 million.
Animated comedy Sausage Party was also a non-mover, taking $15.3m (£11.7m) to retain its number two position.
This is the first film for Philips since the release of The Hangover Part III back in 2013 and is also his first collaboration with Teller and Hill. The movie earned just $11 million from 3,000 screens, with another $10 million coming from 23 global markets. “Kubo and the Two Strings” was fashioned as Laika’s most ambitious film yet, with the company’s chief executive, Phil Knight, making his directorial debut.
The latest retelling of Judah Ben-Hur’s redemption at the chariot track tried to attract faith-based moviegoers despite Hollywood’s spotty record with winning them over.
Ben-Hur is the fifth film adaption of Lee Wallace’s novel Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ, which was published in 1880. The movie was co-produced by Mark Burnett and Roma Downey, who have enormous cachet with religious audiences skeptical of Hollywood treatments of Biblical stories. But it was unable to turn them out as successfully as Paramount did for “Noah” (which debuted with $43.7 million in 2014) or even Fox’s less popular “Exodus: Gods and Kings” (a $24.1 million opening in 2014).
The bad guys continue to rule the box office as Suicide Squad was No. 1 again.
Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at USA and Canadian theaters, according to comScore.
While you can be sure DC and Warner Bros. would much rather be critical darlings like Marvel Studios, you can’t argue with numbers like what Suicide Squad is bringing in. It has grossed a total of $65.8 million in two weeks and shows little sign of losing momentum. War Dogs finished third this week with $14.3 million and I was expecting it to find a larger audience.
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“Kubo and the Two Strings”, an animated feature about a boy seeking his destiny in mystical Japan, grossed $12.6 million. Enter Ben-Hur, Paramount’s latest remake. Pete’s Dragon saw nearly a 50 percent drop and passed $40 million domestically. While far from a blockbuster like The Secret Life of Pets and Finding Dory, Two Strings could still see a profitable run in theaters with the bulk of the family films having come and gone for the summer.
