Box Office Week: Alien: Covenant barely takes #1 with a disappointing $36.1M while Everything, Everything surprises at #3 with $11.7M, and finally Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul flops at #6 with $7.1M. Also Beauty and the Beast has become the 10th highest grossing film worldwide with $1.22B.

Rank	Title	Domestic Gross (Weekend)	Worldwide Gross (Cume)	Week #
1	Alien: Covenant	$36,160,621	$117,889,980	1
2	Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2	$34,653,754	$732,860,023	3
3	Everything, Everything	$11,727,390	$11,727,390	1
4	Snatched	$7,832,517	$39,937,256	2
5	King Arthur: Legend of the Sword	$7,152,269	$94,503,490	2

Notable Box Office Stories:

• While it managed to take #1 just barely Alien: Covenant had a fairly disappointing opening at $36.1M, a 29% decrease from Prometheus' opening of $51M. This is particularly troubling as clearly the branding and tone of the film were trying to reset this franchise towards a more name recognized brand, so the fact it dropped this much shows the property is on shaky ground. However one thing to note is that for a big summer blockbuster this film is relatively cheap, costing $97M. And while that may sound like a lot to some, compare that to say the $94.2M made by King Arthur: Legend of the Sword on a budget of $175M and you'll see Covenant is doing just fine. In fact globally the film has made $117.8M, so it's already passed its budget. Still one wonders how Fox is considering the future of this franchise. For one they've completely given over the reigns to Ridley Scott, who not only is no spring chicken at the age of 79 but is attached to direct some 20 other films. Also reviews have been steadily declining for Ridley's new take on the Alien mythos. While Covenant got modest reviews from critics, it got a pretty weak B rating on Cinemascore, and remember that is polling hardcore Alien fans who went opening night. It's possible the WOM on this film will be pretty bad and already seems to be experiencing backlash similar to Prometheus. And it's not just the US premiere that's below Prometheus, as almost every market has opened lower than that film despite the seemingly more marketable Alien name attached. However there is something to be said that both Prometheus and Covenant combined cost less than Spectre for instance, so it's certainly a rare blockbuster property that doesn't need to make over $500M to justify its existence. Still it's hard to see where the Alien franchise will go from here, especially now that Fox has canned the Blomkamp film in favor of Ridley's vision. If people keep rejecting Ridley's ideas for what the franchise should be it could get to a point where even the reasonable budgets aren't enough.

• Despite having almost no marketing save for a notably panned emoji only trailer the YA romance Everything, Everything managed to surprise, opening at #3 with $11.7M. The film based on a popular YA novel only cost $10M and seemed more focused on garnering small interest for a possible streaming play, but it actually surprised pretty well passing its budget in its first weekend. While the film received middling reviews it did receive a pretty good A- score on Cinemascore which means it could hold well as an option for teen girls in a generally unfriendly time for them, summer blockbuster season. 82% of the audience for the film was female and 75% under the age of 25, so clearly what little marketing they had was effectively targeted to the right demo.

• Seems a long delay and a complete cast change was just what this franchise didn't need as Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul flopped opening at #6 with $7.1M. After the third film Dog Days the creators seemed pretty ambivalent about a fourth which might explain the long delay and completely random timing of this film. Clearly the biggest issue here was recasting which fans of the previous film hated, not to mention the odd choice to make the film a direct sequel to the third film despite an entirely different cast. Reviews for the film were just as bad as the others, but the Cinemascore for Long Haul is a poor B, while the other three received A-'s. With a budget of $22M the film will probably just barely recoup and even if it doesn't it's such a minor write-off that it doesn't matter. However I think it's safe to say this is the end of the Wimpy Kid franchise that probably should have just stayed dead.

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 #
Your Name	$4,806,061	$354,328,144	Unk	38
Moonlight	$27,854,932	$65,046,687	$1.5M	31
Get Out	$174,927,255	$229,527,255	$4.5M	13
Beauty and the Beast (2017)	$497,782,049	$1,221,782,049	$160M	10
The Fate of the Furious	$219,883,865	$1,212,583,865	$90M	6

Notable Film Closings

Title	Domestic Gross (Cume)	Worldwide Gross (Cume)	Budget
The Shack	$57,386,418	$89,187,257	$20M
The Promise	$8,224,288	$8,880,524	$90M

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.

Submitted May 23, 2017 at 03:07AM by mi-16evil http://ift.tt/2rJu9Xk