Even with three new movies debuting in theaters, it was the hold-overs of Suicide Squad and Sausage Party that ended up topping the domestic box office.
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Although MGM put up roughly 80% of the budget for the film, its failure will be felt at Paramount. But it’s the latest in a string of under-performers for Paramount, including Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows and Zoolander 2.
Ben-Hur is out now in the States and on opens September 7th in the United Kingdom with a cast that includes Jack Huston, Morgan Freeman, Toby Kebbell, Nazanin Boniadi, Rodrigo Santoro, Sofia Black D’Elia, Ayelet Zurer, Moisés Arias, Marwan Kenzari and Pilou Asbæk. “Audiences are saying, ‘remakes or sequels have got to be great or original if you want us to show up'”. “Suicide Squad” broke the record with $133.7 million debut. It brought in $20.7 million to bring its domestic total to $261 million. The comic book based movie has the highest grossing opening for the month of August and has surpassed its $175 million budget.
Once again the Warner Bros.
Kubo and the Two Strings was the only movie out of this trio of new releases that was a hit with critics, with a 96% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with Ben-Hur at 29% and War Dogs just barely missing a “Fresh” rating with 59%.
Also at the specialty box office, Natalie Portman’s directorial debut, A Tale of Love and Darkness, opened more than a year after premiering at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival. Time Warner Inc.’sWarner Bros. released the movie.
Sausage Party was down 54.8% to $15.5 million in 2nd.
The big bomb this weekend was Timur Bekmambetov’s take on Ben-Hur.
The rest of the top tier were “Pete’s Dragon” (11.3 million dollars), “Bad Moms” (8.1 million dollars), “Jason Bourne” (8 million dollars), “The Secret Life of Pets” (5.8 million dollars) and “Florence Foster Jenkins” (4.3 million dollars).
We’ll see if any of them can make hay off of Suicide Squad’s drop. It met analyst projections of $12 million to $15 million and is a respectable start for a film that cost less than $50 million to make.
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Timur Bekmambetov’s Ben-Hur was shut out of the box-office chariot race this weekend, debuting to a mere $11.4 million from 3,804 theaters despite a hefty production of almost $100 million and getting beat by a pair of smaller new films, War Dogs and Kubo and the Two Strings.
