Chris Aronson, head of Fox’s domestic distribution, credited the continued success of “The Martian” to its crowd-pleasing story. Meanwhile, no amount of pixie dust could save this weekend’s two biggest new movies.
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In honor of the rare, fascinating spectacle of the box office bomb, here are a few of Hollywood’s most infamous financial catastrophes.
If The Martian continues its strong holds, it should be able to crack $200 million by the end of its run.
While Warner Bros.is the principal investor in Pan, its partner is RatPac-Dune, the entertainment company run by Steven Mnuchin, Brett Ratner and James Packer.
Sony’s Hotel Transylvania 2 came in second with $20.3 million in its third week. It got $15.5 million. Young kids may find it a little too scary, while older kids may not consider it “cool” enough to go to. It landed in fourth with $8.7 million, bringing its cumulative total to just under $50 million. After just three weeks at the box office, the animated sequel has a $116 million domestic total. Smashing the 2015 per screen average record, the Aaron Sorkin-penned film grossed a spectacular $521k from just 4 theaters – a $130k per screen average. Finally moving into wide release, awards buzz and critical plaudits couldn’t really help Sony’s “The Walk” from director Robert Zemeckis which couldn’t really connect with audiences taking in a small $3.6 million from 1300 screens. With stiff competition at the box office from The Martian and Hotel Transylvania 2, third place is more disappointing for an opening weekend. The film has $6.4 million domestically and $13.5 million worldwide for Sony; it should finish up with around $20 million stateside. The fantasy adventure flick “Pan”, directed by Joe Wright, is estimated to be a huge flop and might lead to a great monetary loss of approximately $130 million.
Broad Green expanded “99 Homes”, the R-rated thriller starring Andrew Garfield, Michael Shannon and Laura Dern, from 19 theaters to 679, and it took in $689,000.
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We don’t need to Monday morning quarterback this one to death, but I would suggest an origin story about a character before he had any special powers, where the biggest selling point was a villain we didn’t know much about other than that he dressed amusing, was fighting an uphill battle. Outside the top 10, Steve Jobs, the biopic of the late Apple CEO directed by Danny Boyle and written by Aaron Sorkin, opened in four theaters in New York and Los Angeles to a powerful $520,942. And it’s likely the studio already took a write-down on Pan when pushing back the film’s release from July to October 8.
