Box Office Week: Dunkirk opens to a very strong $50.5M, Girls Trip surprises opening at #2 with $30.3M, Valerian bombs opening at #5 with $17M on a budget of $209M, and Wonder Woman ($389M) passes Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2's domestic gross ($387M) becoming the 2nd highest grossing film of 2017

Quick side note: I'm off next weekend to go to a wedding. You have no idea how sad I am I won't be able to discuss the box office success or failure of The Emoji Movie

Rank	Title	Domestic Gross (Weekend)	Worldwide Gross (Cume)	Week #
1	Dunkirk	$50,500,000	$105,900,000	1
2	Girls Trip	$30,370,720	$30,370,720	1
3	Spider-Man: Homecoming	$22,010,000	$571,711,581	3
4	War for the Planet of the Apes	$20,400,000	$174,882,706	2
5	Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets	$17,020,00	$17,020,000	1

Notable Box Office Stories:

• Going into the weekend it was really damn tough to predict exactly what would happen to Dunkirk. Clearly the film had the full backing of a studio, the kind of blank check Christopher Nolan only gets to make after making four $200M+ domestic grossing films for the studio previously. A $150M war film with a complex narrative structure coming out in July feels like a hell of a gamble but it's paid off as the film opened to a very strong $50.5M domestic, the first original film to be #1 at the box office since Get Out. WB and Nolan's insistence audiences do their best to see the film in IMAX worked extraordinarily well, as $11.7M of the total domestic gross came from 402 IMAX locations, one of the biggest IMAX releases in history. That number gives the IMAX theaters an incredible per theater average of $29,129 PTA. The film also scored well overseas, earning $55.4M mostly lead by the UK ($12.4M) who the film is basically about though it also did very well in South Korea ($10.3M), France ($4.9m), and Australia ($4.7m). This already make the film's worldwide total over $100M, an impressive start to a very intense war drama. While the critics were mostly ecstatic (the film has the best Metacritic score for a Nolan film by far) there was some concern that the film would be to confusing, depressing, or unique for general audiences. Those fears should be assuaged as the film scored an A- on Cinemascore, the best score Nolan has gotten for a non-Batman film. Nolan already has great multipliers to his films (Inception scored a B+ and had a 4.66x multiplier) and Dunkirk seems poised to do the same. A big help is that the film is playing to an older audience (63% of those who saw Dunkirk this weekend were over the age of 25) who may feel starved by recent releases and seeking a different kind of film. Also the fact Dunkirk is a very short 1hr45min might help fill in more showtimes for more profits. The best comparison film might be Saving Private Ryan, another war movie released in the summer that dropped below 30% for it's first 9 weeks. Dunkirk probably won't have a run that excellent but with so much marketing put on the IMAX experience and great word of mouth, the film should easily hold past $150M domestic. Quite a remarkable feat for Nolan who proves once again he is one of the few filmmakers who can make whatever he wants and it's a hit.

• As I said before the three genres people constantly underestimate are religious films, horror films, and films with black leads. The latter proved true this weekend as Girls Trip leaped past most expectations to open at #2 with $30.3M (many predicted the film in the low 20s at best). On paper the opening looks very similar to All Eyez on Me, which opened well to $32M against expectations. However that film faced immediate harsh backlash and dropped a lot by Sunday, while Girls Trip saw only a 4% drop from Friday to Saturday and only a 32% drop for Sunday. This combined with the phenomenal A+ score on Cinemascore means the film should have long legs. The film also hit a very specific demo as 60% of the audience was black, 79% female, and 50% under the age of 30. There really isn't any other films appeal to that demo out right now and the fact that Universal aimed straight for that demo and and nailed it speaks volumes for its longevity. As we've seen with films like How to be a Latin Lover, films that target a specific demo tend to perform very well over the long haul. Big studios are finally wising up to these underserved markets and will continue to find ways to appeal to them as overall ticket sales dwindle.

• Oh Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets how predicable your first weekend was. In an age where non-sequel sci-fi so often underwhelms, a not very well reviewed film based on an obscure (but yes very influential) comic opening at #5 with $17M is not the least bit shocking. What is shocking is the price tag for the film, the most expensive in French history at $209M (but more on that later). The film's performance is shockingly similar to another not well reviewed sci-fi potential franchise starter Jupiter Ascending which opened to a similar $18.3M and scored the exact same terrible Cinemascore of B-. Because of that score don't expect the film to even pass $50M domestic. Now about that budget, as some sources say it's as "low" at $150M or as high as $209M (I went with $209M as that's the number Box Office Mojo gives as official). Part of the issue is that according to Europa Corp and director Luc Besson, 90% of the film's budget was covered through foreign pre-sales, tax subsidies, and equity financing. This is a similar move that Gods of Egypt pulled a few years ago and that did shelter the film from a lot of the disasterous returns. However Europa Corp still financed the marketing, with US distributor STX only having to secure theater rentals. Unless it has a remarkable run overseas Valerian has a long road to go to being profitable and an even longer road to justify a sequel.

• Just when I thought I was done with Wonder Woman the box office numbers pull me back in. The film came in at #9 with $4.3M which was enough to push the film passed the lifetime domestic gross of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, coming in as the second highest grossing domestic film of the year with $389M (behind Beauty and the Beast with $504M) and the highest grossing film of the summer. To understand just how good Wonder Woman's legs were, compared the opening of it and GOTG Vol. 2, which opened more than $40M higher than WW but still it managed to beat it. At this point the film's chances of passing $400M are all but a certainty, and it will soon open in Japan which should help it past $800M worldwide. The film has also passed Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 becoming the 3rd highest grossing film ever for Warner Bros, behind only The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises. The film has spent the last 6 weeks dropping lower than 40%, a remarkable achievement no blockbuster has done since Avatar.

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 #
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2	$387,252,502	$859,983,257	$200M	12
Alien: Covenant	$74,016,851	$232,312,741	$97M	9
Wonder Woman	$389,033,279	$779,433,279	$149M	8
Cars 3	$144,021,565	$249,921,565	$175M	6
Baby Driver	$84,233,939	$118,633,939	$34M	4

Notable Film Closings

Title	Domestic Gross	Worldwide Gross	Budget
King Arthur:Legend of the Sword	$39,175,066	$140,775,066	$175M
The Lost City of Z	$8,574,339	$17,124,339	$30M

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.

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Submitted July 24, 2017 at 09:29PM by mi-16evil http://ift.tt/2tuzG4t