May gave us the U. S. release of Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2 and the next chapter in the Alien-franchise. In June, Wonder Woman hits theaters and two extremely popular animated franchises return to the screen.
NORTH AMERICAN OPENING WEEKEND PREDICTIONS:
- Captain Underpants – 20th Century Fox – June 2nd, 2017 – $30 million
- Wonder Woman – Warner Bros. – June 2nd, 2017 – $87 million
- The Mummy – Universal – June 9th, 2017 – $40 million
- Cars 3 – Disney – June 16th, 2017 – $55 million
- Rough Night – Sony/Columbia – June 16th, 2017 – $25 million
- Transformers: The Last Knight – Paramount – June 21st, 2017 – $95 million
- Despicable Me 3 – Universal – June 30th, 2017 – $100 million
I’ve always said that Wonder Woman would make about as much as Doctor Strange did in its opening weekend and $87 million would fit that prediction. While I haven’t loved every trailer for the film, I’ve had a great feeling about this film for about a year.
There has been a lot of great reactions from critics on social media, so the reviews for the film should be fairly positive, which makes me really happy. It is about time the DC Cinematic Universe got a critically acclaimed film.
MAJOR OPENING WEEKENDS – MAY:
- Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2 – Disney – May 5th, 2017 – $146 million (-19)
- King Arthur: Legend of the Sword – Warner Bros. – May 12th, 2017 – $15 million (-5)
- Alien: Covenant – 20th Century Fox – May 19th, 2017 – $36 million (-14)
- Baywatch – Paramount – May 25th, 2017 – $18 million (-32)
- Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales – Disney – May 26th, 2017 – $62 million (-8)
I seem to have overestimated how much people were excited about Volume Two, and I should’ve stuck with my $130-145 million prediction from January. It is still pretty amazing that the sequel to Guardians of the Galaxy opened to more than $50 million more than the first film.
It’s only fair to call King Arthur a true box office flop. It made $5 million less than I had predicted it would in its opening weekend, but, still, I never expected it to be a financial success. I’m just not sure that U. S. audiences care about the Arthurian legend and the marketing for the film wasn’t very good.
Like 20th Century Fox probably did, I thought that the Alien title would ensure that Covenant would open to about the same number that Prometheus did. But Prometheus had done a lot of damage, it seems. $36 million really isn’t enough to make me feel certain that we’re getting a sequel to Covenant, which I absolutely want to see. The production budget for Covenant was way less than Prometheus, so maybe that will help.
Baywatch, meanwhile, is another disaster. It seems that they’ve misunderstood what kind of fan-base would be behind the film. I also think it’s an interesting case of having marketed the movie poorly. It’s Baywatch – we all know what people associate with that show – but they’ve instead only focused on the film’s two leading men. I don’t know, I haven’t seen the film yet, but that did seem odd to me.
THE BILLION DOLLAR CLUB:
- Beauty and the Beast – Disney – $1,234 billion
- The Fate of the Furious – Universal – $1,225 billion
Box office totals as of May 31st, 2017
It still doesn’t look like Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2 will become a member of the Billion Dollar Club, which really isn’t a surprise. But June has a couple of interesting contenders. Minions made more than $1 billion and Despicable Me 2 made $970 million, so I’m pretty sure that Despicable Me 3 will become a member at some point.
– Jeffrey Rex
I'm Jeffrey Rex 