By Chris Kavan - 08/30/20 at 09:23 PM CT
As the summer closes out and theaters begin to reopen, the long-delayed X-Men spinoff New Mutants finally opened after a series of delays. I'm sure Disney would have been more than happy to shift this to streaming, but with the merger it sound like that just wan't an option. What it means is that New Mutants, which didn't screen for many critics, didn't please those who showed up in theaters and even though it did top Unhinged in terms of an opening, it's not exactly the X-Men sendoff anyone really wanted. Overseas, however, Tenet nabbed a nifty debut in several markets while in China, The Eight Hundred continues its powerful run.
1) THE NEW MUTANTS
About the best thing you can say about the opening of New Mutants is that its $7 million weekend put it ahead of Unhinged's $5 million opening to officially make it the biggest movie of the summer! On the other hand, New Mutants was ravaged by critics (who actually showed up to watch it) and is otherwise a whimper end to the current X-Men franchise (which will eventually be rebooted to join the MCU sometime in the nebulous future). The young cast (Maisie Williams, Anya Taylor-Joy, Charlie Heaton, Blu Hunt and Henry Zaga), a ground-breaking LGBQ romance and the horror angle just wasn't enough to push audiences back to theaters. And that is par for the course for films that suffer years-long delays - if this had come out when originally scheduled, I'm sure it would have done much better. Now it has to live with the fact it's going to be considered the worst X-Men film - and that's saying a lot considering how bad Dark Phoenix turned out to be. Much like Unhinged, New Mutants is just a stepping-stone to the big fall premiere of Tenet.
2)
UNHINGED
After opening to $5 million as the first big release in these Covid times, Russell Crowe's deranged thriller dipped 35% (despite adding 600 new locations. Still, that is actually a pretty good hold considering the situation and with $2.6 million, the film now stands at $8.8 million and a long road ahead of it. With Tenet really being the only big release of note in the near future, Unhinged will continue to chug along and even if it drops below $1 million week-to-week, the fact it can continue to play in theaters is enough for its to be successful in the long run. For the times we're in, Unhinged is performing just fine and I think you're going tot see it sticking around for a long time.
3)
BILL & TED FACE THE MUSIC
While I didn't cover it in the weekend write-up, the third entry in the Bill & Ted franchise did launch in over 1000 theaters - and also premiered on PVOD at the same time (in which it quickly topped the charts across the board). Despite being available for home viewing, enough people decided to check out the Wyld Stallyns on the big screen to the tune of about $1.2 million (the studio hasn't actually reported numbers yet, but in all likelihood, this total should be accurate). Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter reprise their roles, as the now middle-aged rockers who are still looking for their world-saving hit song. Their daughters (played by Samara Weaving and Brigette Lundy-Paine) get drawn into their new time-twisting adventures as well. The film also stars William Sadler (reprising his role as death), Kristen Schaal, Erinn Hayes, Jayma Mays, Kid Cudi (as himself), Anthony Carrigan, Jillian Bell and Holland Taylor. By all accounts, had Face the Music been released only in theaters, it probably would have topped New Mutants, as it topped the film in 25% of the theaters where both films played. And it cost a lot less than the X-Men spinoff. In any case, it is burning up the PVOD charts so it should still turn a tidy profit, fewer theaters or not.
The biggest news in film once again took place outside the U.S. as Christopher Nolan's much-anticipated Tenet opened on the international front where it brought in $53 million. In normal times, that would be a bit underwhelming for a new Nolan film - but these are far from normal times and with good word-of-mouth, Tenet looks to make a big splash stateside (and China-side) - or at least, we can hope it does. It has been a rather bumpy ride for theaters thus far and perhaps Tenet can turn things around. It has pretty clear sailing throughout September and faces no big competition (as long as things remain open, of course) until October when Wonderwoman 1984 drops.
Speaking of international, China's major launch of The Eight Hundred continues to dominate that market, easily topping the $275 million market and looking at $300 million by Monday or Tuesday, which would put is behind only Bad Boys for Life ($428 million) as the biggest film of the entire year. And all signs point toward it being able to overtake that mark, even if it gets decent competition from Tenet.
The Personal History of David Copperfield also debuted over the weekend, but the well-reviewed modern retelling of Charles Dicken's classic tale only earned $520,000 in 1,360 theaters for a weak $382 per-theater average. The film stars Dev Patel, Tilda Swinton, Hugh Laurie, Morfydd Clark, Gwendoline Christie, Peter Capaldi, Rosalind Eleazar and Ben Whishaw among others. This one should be a decent streaming selection but deserved better in theaters.
Next week all eyes are going to be on Tenet, which is going to anchor the Labor Day Weekend and we'll see if theaters finally get the hit they so desperately need or if wary audiences choose to say home.
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