We told you last week that this was going to happen. Both ‘Men in Black: International‘ and the new ‘Shaft‘ film had terrible reviews and not a lot of interest going into their opening weekends.
The very optimistic projections had Men in Black making around $30 million and Shaft bringing home $20 million.
Well, neither film hit their projections. Men in Black grabbed the top spot at the box office, but only made $28.5 million, which is nearly 50% less than what MIB 3 made in 2012 during its opening weekend.
Meanwhile, Shaft was even more of a disappointment. It made just $8.3 million this past weekend. That’s less than half of what box office experts had predicted it would make. The 2000 Shaft film debuted to $21 million.
To be fair to sequels though, original films are also struggling…
It’s not just franchises feeling the burn. Positive reviews didn’t salvage “Amazon’s ‘Late Night,’ an original comedy from Mindy Kaling. The movie, co-starring Kaling and Emma Thompson, finished in ninth place with $5.1 million after the studio expanded the comedy to 2,220 venues. It debuted in limited release last weekend, collecting a solid $249,654, which brings ticket sales to $5.4 million.
Amazon purchased the distribution rights to the film for $14 million, which was one of the biggest sales to come out of Sundance.
The good news is Toy Story 4 is coming this weekend and it should get everything back on track. By the way, it has a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes with over 100 reviews counted.
