Crazy Rich Asians To Ring Up More Bling Than Melissa McCarthys Naughty Puppets – B.O. Preview
Warner Bros Crazy Rich Asians is expected to reign supreme in its second weekend with $16 million-$18 million as the summer box office winds down.
Those K-12 schools off according to comScore fall from 57% last Friday to 40% this weekend, but an even harder drop is among colleges, which move from 90% off to 57% off over the same time frame.
Crazy Rich Asians earned $5.5M yesterday, bringing its weeks cume to $44.4M. As we mentioned before, this film will easily get to $100M-$110M stateside, but it will emulate a different gross pattern than DreamWorks The Help, another big diversity hit based on a bestselling femme novel. While that movie played deep into the South and even touched churchgoers, Crazy Rich Asians crushes in big cities.
STXs gross-out puppet Melissa McCarthy comedy The Happytime Murders is making one of summers last stands for a genre that has been pained at the box office for some time. The R-rated film cost an estimated $40M before P&A, and tracking has it between $13M-$15M at 3,225 theaters. If it over-indexes, it could be more like $16M-$17M. McCarthys New Line femme comedy Life of the Party opened to a ho-hum $17.9M back in May and wound up at $52.8M.
Jim Hensons son Brian Henson directs off Todd Bergers script in a story where puppets co-inhabit the human world in modern Los Angeles. Celebrity puppets from an 80s children show are getting picked off in a killing spree, and its up to P.I. and former cop Phil Philips to reteam with his former partner Detective Connie Edwards (McCarthy) to find out whats going on. Elizabeth Banks, Maya Rudolph and Joel McHale also star.
Many Groundling alums who shared the Melrose Avenue stage with McCarthy during the early aughts also make cameos including but not limited to Mitch Silpa, Damon Jones and McCarthys husband Ben Falcone.
A media and audience screening at the Hollywood Arclight on Monday night played to great laughs. At a time when comedies are stale, The Happytime Murders aims to be different. The common comp here is the Seth Rogen- and Evan Goldberg-produced Sausage Party from two Augusts ago, another R-rated comedy that was original involving sexually active supermarket food. That pic launched to $34.2M with a $97.7M final domestic off a 82% certified fresh positive score on Rotten Tomatoes.
Compared to Sausage Partys tracking, Happytime Murders has lower awareness in the total and unaided categories, with the movie skewing slightly female; McCarthys audience. Sausage Party leaned toward young guys. At present an RT score hasnt registered yet for Happytime Murders. Previews start tomorrow at 7 PM.
Global Road, mired in financial problems, has the Lakeshore co-production A.X.L. about a robot dog who goes on adventures with a kind-hearted outsider. Blink, and this film will be likely gone soon; tracking has this pic around $3M-$5M at 1,695 locations. No Rotten Tomatoes reviews yet.
Next weekend, believe or not, its the end of summer.
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