Age of Ultron makes all of the money but not ALL of the money so cinema is officially doomed, and Other Box Office News.
Heading into this weekend, Disney and Marvel Studios were probably preparing the Scrooge McDuck money bin for the inbound GDP of multiple small countries that would make up the opening weekend total of Age of Ultron. After all, it’s not like they’ve been quiet about the fact that the film was inbound – I’m waiting for somebody to piece together the movie from the endless promo clips that Marvel released for this thing, like what happened with The Amazing Spider-Man 2 – it’s The Avengers, and it’s not like there was anything else out this weekend. Or the weekend before that. Or the weekend before that. What was everybody going to do, watch Furious 7 again? They probably felt like Shane McMahon; “here comes the mon-ay!”
Well, the mon-ay came, but not in the Earth-shattering quantity that we all unreasonably expected it to. Age of Ultron opened in first, and accounted for 85% of the weekend’s domestic box office, but it didn’t beat The Avengers’ $207 million opening weekend. In fact, it didn’t even come close, finishing with $187 million. I mean, it’s understandable, the first Avengers was an EVENT MOVIE of epic proportions, the first time that we could see all of these guys (and girl) together on screen in the same movie. By simple fact of it happening again, Age of Ultron is only an Event Movie, and no amount of excess marketing saturation can change that.
Then there’s also the fact that everybody seems very much more divided on this instalment than the first one. I mean, not so much audience-wise – it got an “A” on the shaky silly CinemaScore metric – but critically, definitely. I mean, I’m probably going to be on the minority side of things with regards to my critic friends by liking it, and this divide will likely bleed over into the general public, too. Plus, some sh*tty boxing thing happened this weekend or something, and there’s only one thing that captures the American public’s slovenly attention quicker than movies… It’s sports, I’m talking about sports. Besides, this is still, by a considerable margin, the second best opening weekend in America ever, and the film is already up to $436 million overseas with China still to go.
However, Age of Ultron did not beat The Avengers in its opening weekend and May is incredibly crowded with regards to films – basically guaranteeing that Ultron won’t match The Avengers’ total – so cinema is now doomed forever. The superhero bubble has burst, folks! Marvel Studios are over the hill! Their films aren’t as good as they used to be, they can’t beat opening weekend records anymore, and they only made all of the money instead of ALL of the money! They’re finished, the genre is finished, this whole goddamn medium is finished! If even Marvel can’t make ALL of the money, anymore, then what hope is there for the rest of us?! WHAT, I TELLS YA?!
Oh, yeah, and Far From the Madding Crowd opened in limited release this weekend. $172,000 from 10 theatres. Snooze.
There are no strings on this Full List.
Box Office Results: Friday 1st May 2015 – Sunday 3rd May 2015
1] The Avengers: Age of Ultron
$187,656,000 / NEW
Yes, even with a per-screen average of $44,000, Age of Ultron is still a failure! …yeah, OK, I’m gonna stop that now. I am serious though when I say that I don’t think Ultron is going to match The Avengers’ total, at least domestically. The first film had nothing serious to challenge it for three weeks, and even then I don’t think we all expected Men In Black III to perform that well, but Ultron has the combined onslaught of Mad Max: Fury Road and Pitch Perfect 2 in 11 days, with Tomorrowland the week after. Even if one of those bombs – hint: it’s going to be Tomorrowland, get the disappointment out of your system now – that’s still two films taking a chunk out of its box office. We’ll see, I guess. Man, this Summer is stacked!
2] The Age of Adeline
$6,250,000 / $23,424,000
Wait, this actually beat Furious 7?! I mean, I sort of saw this coming since this has only been out for two weeks and Furious 7 has been out for over a month, but still. Huh.
3] Furious 7
$6,114,000 / $330,539,000
Up to $1.4 billion worldwide, now the 4th highest grossing film worldwide of all-time, has successfully made $1 billion purely from foreign markets, and is closing fast on The Avengers’ $1.5 billion. It might actually get there, but this going to go right down to the wire. I still can’t get over the fact that all of this originally came from a silly mid-budget Point Break riff from 2001.
$5,500,000 / $51,186,000
So, last Thursday, I was given the opportunity by my university to go down to London, attend a press-only screening of Pitch Perfect 2, and have a 20 minute roundtable interview with the film’s director (and movie star in her own right), Elizabeth Banks, afterwards. I have been wanting to shout about that day and that whole experience since I found out about it that Tuesday, so finally getting to spill today has been incredibly cathartic. At the risk of sounding unprofessional, the day was incomparable – mainly because it proved that I could do this for a living if the opportunity were presented to me – and you can read all about it and the interview here. The full interview transcript will be posted over at The Hullfire soon enough, but there’s a Pitch Perfect 2 review for you to read in the meantime!
Yes, I am talking about something that makes me happy instead of Paul Blart. Why wouldn’t I?
5] Home
$3,300,000 / $158,132,000
Home finally opened in China last week, where DreamWorks films have often done well recently… and only made $8 million. It is now up to $326 million worldwide, though. Still, MAKE MORE MONEY FASTER, DAMMIT!
6] Cinderella
$2,357,000 / $193,651,000
Wait, seriously? This re-entered the chart? From the no. 12 slot? Man, this was a bad week to be a non-Avengers film.
7] Ex Machina
$2,231,000 / $10,868,000
Surprising no-one, not even art house patrons could resist the allure of Ultron, since all art house patrons must be able to butt into conversations about blockbusters and explain in great detail why they suck horribly. In any case, Ex Machina was never going to be a film that made a giant expansion in audience moneybills, anyway, so the fact that it’s doing $10 million worth of business already is good enough, I feel. Yay for Alex Garland!
8] Unfriended
$1,988,000 / $28,531,000
I don’t think Lucy’s seen this yet, so I’m going to withhold having an opinion until I’ve heard from her.
9] The Longest Ride
$1,700,000 / $33,240,000
Should probably clarify that I don’t think Age of Ultron is perfect – god, no, it’s a mess – and that having reasonable complaints about it is fine. I just don’t understand why people who hate a certain genre or series, know that they will hate the latest instalment, and spend all of their time prior to seeing the thing complaining about doing so, would voluntarily… (*author remembers that this is what he does on an astoundingly frequent basis*)
I’ll be quiet now.
10] Woman in Gold
$1,681,000 / $24,588,000
The Voices is available on DVD and Blu-Ray from all good video shops on July 27th.
Dropped Out: Get Hard, Monkey Kingdom
Callie Petch didn’t mean to make you cry.
Callie Petch 