Pirates of the Caribbean 5 takes #1 with a mediocre $77M for holiday weekend, but does well overseas, Baywatch bombs opening at #3 with $23M, and Alien: Covenant drops 70% to #4 with $13.1M. Also Beauty and the Beast passes $500M domestic and Fate of the Furious passes $1B in international sales.

Rank	Title	Domestic Gross (Weekend)	Worldwide Gross (Cume)	Week #
1	Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales	$77,044,000	$285,444,000	1
2	Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2	$25,153,000	$788,568,92	4
3	Baywatch	$23,000,000	$28,479,514	1
4	Alien: Covenant	$13,150,000	$160,981,462	2
5	Everything, Everything	$7,375,000	$22,731,113	2

*all numbers for 4 day weekend

Notable Box Office Stories:

• It's very interesting that this year sees new entries for the three major franchises that could define the future of blockbuster American cinema, the latest and second of the bunch being Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales (also know as Salazar's Revenge in some markets) which opened this weekend for $76.6M for the four day holiday weekend ($62.1M for the three day). The other franchises I mentioned are Fast and the Furious and Transformers, all of which have seen dwindling domestic grosses but massive increases in foreign sales. As mentioned below Fate of the Furious has now made $1B in international sales alone but only $222M domestic, meaning only 18% of its total gross has from domestic. It seems that Pirates is on the exact same course, as the film had the second worst three-day opening for the franchise, just above the original's release of $46.6M but far below Dead Man's Chest peak opening of $135.5M. It also should be noted that while Curse of the Black Pearl opened lower, the film had an incredible multiplier ending its run over $300M domestic and while On Stranger Tides opened to $90M it closed below Black Pearl with $241M domestic. If Pirates 5 closes to a similar multiplier it could very well be that it will be first Pirates film to not even pass $200M domestic, though it did score a good A- on Cinemascore. As such the opening of Pirates 5 feels like it's the logical tipping point of a too old franchise, but that would be if we were still in the old days and Pirates has already survived said tipping point in 2011 with On Stranger Tides, which still to this day is the most expensive film of all time with a staggering budget of $378M. Almost certainly a film that expensive with that low of a domestic gross would destroy a franchise and maybe even the studio making it, but the film managed to gross $1B worldwide, a 22%/78% split between domestic and foreign. And in that we see that Pirates 5 still feels viable as the film had the 12th highest foreign opening of all time, opening at $208.1 with the third largest premiere for Disney in China where the franchise is a massive seller in terms of merchandise. It also doesn't hurt that Pirates 5 broke the tradition of each Pirates movie topping the previous one as the most expensive film of all time, as this time the film had a more reasonable budget of $230M (of course a "reasonable budget for a Pirates movie still means it's in the top 20 most expensive films ever made). It's very likely that Pirates is on track to become the second film this year where a worrisome domestic opening is completely dwarfed by a phenomenal international play. As such it's beginning to feel like the domestic market simply doesn't matter for blockbusters any more and genre oddball plays like American Sniper and Get Out are the only ones left that are defined by their domestic runs over their international ones.

• While The Rock claimed that fans loved the film while critics lambasted it, there didn't seem to be that many fans out there as Baywatch flopped opening with $23M for the four day weekend ($18.1M for the three-day). This some really bad news for a lot of reasons. First up the R-rated comedy cost a staggering $69M (do you think they subtracted a mil just for the joke?). In comparison similar films 21 Jump St cost $42M and CHIPS cost $25M. Almost certainly 60% of that went to the cast as the film seemed overly relight on CGI and greenscreen. It's also the worst three-day opening for Dwanye Johnson since 2010's The Tooth Fairy and the first film of his to open below $20M since 2013's Snitch which opened in 1,000 less theaters than Baywatch. It's also by far the worst narrative film opening for director Seth Gordon. So what the hell happened here? For one the R-rating certainly doesn't help as by all accounts the film barely uses it which might explain why 55% of the audience was over the age of 25. Also as we see from CHIPS closing this week just $500K over it's budget, the interest in 70s/80s sarcastic reboots has clearly gone away. Even 90s properties like Power Rangers are just not performing well so it seems unless you're doing a live action Disney remake there really isn't a huge market out there right now for nostalgia mining of any kind. The film still has major markets to open with and there the film could have some hope as Baywatch the show was a major international success, but that was two decades ago with a film barely resembling that show. In the end this was just a mistake of a project, one that I don't think many of its stars will look fondly back on once the press junket is long over.

• Normally for these longer write-ups I only discuss films that are #1 or have just opened. However I just have to discuss Alien: Covenant which set a very unwanted record this week as it had the second highest weekend percentage drop ever for a film opening in over 3,000 theaters, making just $10.5M for the three-day (it made $13.1M for the four-day). To put that in perspective the highest percentage drop was Harry Potter Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 2 which made that record after it beat another record, highest domestic opening of all time, so said drop was not surprising as everyone clearly came out for the finale. This drop is alarming to say the least and disasterous to say the worst. It would in a way be easier for Fox to say this was just a bad movie getting its just rewards, but critical and audience reaction has been more mixed then outright negative (see The Circle for what a universally panned movie looks like). No what's far more ominous is that this means the low opening last weekend is a massive amount of the core fanbase of this movie. Right now Alien: Covenant is just frankly not a bomb. So far it's made $158.3M on a budget of $97M, and will likely pull in enough to justify its existence. However what this number does mean is that this weekend could be a franchise killer. If they have lost that much of the core fanbase and if that fan base is so small that they are the only ones seemingly anywhere invested in what this franchise is than there is no reason to continue you, at the very least not in the scale or scope that Ridley Scott seems to want to. Fox needs to take some intense soul searching on what this means because I have quite frankly never seen a drop this bad for a film with this much talent involved.

Films Reddit Wants to Follow

This is a segment where we keep a weekly tally of currently showing films that aren't in the Top 5 that fellow redditors want updates on. If you'd like me to add a film to this chart, make a comment in this thread.

Title	Domestic Gross (Cume)	Worldwide Gross (Cume)	Budget	Week #
Get Out	$175,234,425	$241,034,425	$4.5M	14
Beauty and the Beast (2017)	$500,563,435	$1,232,563,435	$160M	11
Power Rangers	$85,275,488	$140,157,440	$100M	10
The Fate of the Furious	$222,523,415	$1,223,523,415	$250M	7

Notable Film Closings

Title	Domestic Gross (Cume)	Worldwide Gross (Cume)	Budget
Moonlight	$27,854,932	$65,046,687	$1.5M
Your Name	$4,806,061	$354,328,144	unknown
The Belko Experiment	$10,166,820	$10,332,923	$5M
CHIPS	$18,600,152	$25,500,152	$25M
Ghost in the Shell	$40,563,557	$169,801,921	$110M

As always /r/boxoffice is a great place to share links and other conversations about box office news.

Also you can see the archive of all Box Office Week posts at /r/moviesboxoffice. r

Submitted May 30, 2017 at 12:49AM by mi-16evil http://ift.tt/2rd92Nb