Box Office Week: Transformers 5 takes #1 with a franchise low 3-day opener of $45.3M and 5-day opener of $69M. Meanwhile Wonder Woman passes $300M domestic, passing Man of Steel's lifetime domestic gross in 22 days. Finally, The Big Sick opens on 5 screens to $435K, a per theater average of $87K.

Rank	Title	Domestic Gross (Weekend)	Worldwide Gross (Cume)	Week #
1	Transformers: The Last Knight	$45,300,000	$265,295,489	1
2	Cars 3	$25,175,000	$141,282,893	2
3	Wonder Woman	$25,175,000	$652,880,158	4
4	47 Meters Down	$7,435,000	$24,260,932	2
5	All Eyez on Me	$5,850,000	$38,642,319	2

Notable Box Office Stories:

• Well the last of the three major franchises that perform far better overseas is here, and while Fate of the Furious and Pirates 5 are doing fairly well, the future is not so bright for Transformers: The Last Knight which had a horrendous opening in the US for the franchise low opening at #1 with $45.3M for the 3-day and $69M for the 5-day despite no wide releases opening against it. That 3-day number is not only the worst one yet but it's the worst one by far, opening $25M lower than the first film and shockingly $55M lower than Age of Extinction, which came out just 3 years ago. While certainly it's been known that the franchise was losing its luster in the US, it's still quite shocking to see it drop this far. The 5-day is even worse when you compare it to Revenge of the Fallen's 5-day which was $130M higher. A big part of the problem is that the demographic has totally shifted, with only 29% of the the audience under the ago of 18, the previously most sought after demo for the franchise. The other problem is frankly the franchise is old and without any new hooks besides King Arthur (and we saw last month how no one in the US cares about him) there really isn't something driving people to these film anymore, in the US at least. It also doesn't help the multipliers for these films have become terrible with the last film not even passing $250M domestic despite opening at $100M, so this could easily become the first Transformers film not to pass $200M domestic. Indeed as I pointed out Transformers' success has continually pushed more towards foreign, but here things aren't as simple. Obviously the first stop is China where the film performed above and beyond with a franchise high opening of $123M. However in the other 40 territories it opened in this week only one, South Korea ($13M), opened above $10M. The film saw huge drops from Age of Extinction's opening, including a drop in the UK from $20M for Extinction down to just $5.4M for Knight. And remember these are core audiences, as Extinction's box office in the UK dropped 85% on it's second weekend so these are terrible figures in every country but China, a country where industry experts claim you'll be lucky to get 25% of the gross. So while FotF and Pirates 5 have made enough overall, Transformers 5's fate lies entirely in China's hands which may not be enough. Remember Paramount has the Bumblebee spin-off slated for 2018 and Transformers 6 in 2019 so they have put a lot of stock into these films as their only major franchise. However a lot of that comes from branding and merch so if the whole world besides China is just done with these films that is seriously bad news. The question now is, can China be enough to sustain a franchise this expensive and if not what then?

• While film after film has disappointed domestically Wonder Woman still stands supreme. First off on Friday the film scored enough to pass the lifetime gross of Man of Steel ($293M) in just 22 days of release. Then it had the 10th best 4th weekend of all time, dropping just 39% to come in at #2 this weekend with $25.1M. Finally, because of that great weekend the film has now crossed $300M domestic, the third DCEU movie in a row to do so, the 27th fastest film to cross the $300M mark and tying with Spider-Man as the fastest superhero origin film has reached that height. There's not much more to say other than this does add possible fuel to the fire that Rotten Tomatoes may be having a growing impact on the box office, as only Wonder Woman and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 are performing above what was expected of them. There does seem to be a growing disinterest in the domestic market for even the mediocre let alone the terrible and the extremely great runs of films like Wonder Woman and Get Out seem to suggest that word of mouth is becoming a powerful tool once again. It will be interested to see if films that are getting good early positive buzz like War of the Planet of the Apes and The Big Sick can continue this trend.

• Speaking of, The Big Sick, a rom com written and starring Silicon Valley star Kumail Nanjiani, opened in 5 theaters this weekend to an incredible $435K, a per theater average of $87K. The film, which is about Kumail's real life romance with his wife Emily, was a critical darling at Sundance and was bought by Amazon for a whopping $12M. At first it seemed like this buy was for an Oscar play but instead Amazon felt it could be good summer counter-programming and this initial test run seems very promising. That $87K figure is the best multi-screen per theater average of the year so far and the initial buzz has just been incredible. The plan currently seems to be going wide against War of the Planet of the Apes and it could well be a solid hit, though we have seen indies with successful runs in indie theaters not expand very well recently. There is unfortunately also the issue that this is a film about a Pakistani man wooing an American white woman and with racial tensions being heightened shall we say recently there could be issues on how it plays across the country. I'd be damn happy to be wrong about that but it is that kind of era so it remains to be seen.

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 #
Beauty and the Beast (2017)	$503,689,429	$1,256,889,429	$160M	15
The Fate of the Furious	$225,170,965	$1,238,170,965	$250M	11
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2	$380,213,327	$851,213,327	$200M	8

Notable Film Closings

Title	Domestic Gross (Cume)	Worldwide Gross (Cume)	Budget
Get Out	$175,484,140	$251,284,140	$4.5M
How to Be a Latin Lover	$32,149,404	$57,139,687	$10M

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 June 26, 2017 at 09:38PM by mi-16evil http://ift.tt/2sdIVow