Box Office Week: War for the Planet of the Apes opens worse than Dawn but still takes #1 with $56.5M. Spider-man: Homecoming has worst 2nd weekend drop in MCU history, dropping 61% to come in #2 with $45.2M. The Big Sick expands meekly to #5 with $7.6M and Wish Upon bombs opening at #7 with $5.5M.

Rank	Title	Domestic Gross (Weekend)	Worldwide Gross (Cume)	Week #
1	War for the Planet of the Apes	$56,500,000	$102,544,321	1
2	Spider-Man: Homecoming	$45,200,000	$469,370,314	2
3	Despicable Me 3	$18,947,840	$619,389,990	3
4	Baby Driver	$8,750,000	$96,251,857	3
5	The Big Sick	$7,600,000	$16,125,750	4

Notable Box Office Stories:

• It's been a very odd time for blockbusters right now, as while highly reviewed films like Get Out and Wonder Woman overperform, well reviewed films in other franchise like War for the Planet of the Apes weirdly don't as the latest in the rebooted Apes franchise opened well below the $72.6M opening of Dawn of the Planet of the Apes and only slightly above the $54.8M opening for Rise of the Planet of the Apes, opening at #1 with $56.5M. So what exactly happened here, why did a franchise that continues to get better and better reviews manage to underperform this much? For one it could just be audience fatigue. This summer has seen a lot of franchise, most of them underperforming to some degree or another. The only franchise fair that has overperformed expectations has been Wonder Woman which, while the fourth film in an extended universe, was the first in film solo film ever for the WW character. The other issue may just be the content of the films themselves. While certainly these are films about apes on horses shooting guns, they still tackle very heavy subject matter including themes of war, genocide, racism, human atrocities to nature, and other such non summer fair. Frankly I'm kind of surprised Dawn made as much money as it did, especially since the climatic battle of that film isn't even one you are supposed to be rooting for. War has an even tougher hill to climb, as it has already faced some blowback for not being about a war per se, more of a prison encampment film. Not to mention this is the first film trilogy where the main character in all three films is a CGI creature, a damn well designed one but it's fascinating in an age of dwindling A-list power that Cesar has become the literal poster child for the franchise. It could also be that the weather was really nice this weekend and a lot of people, tired of going to the movie every weekend this summer, decided to just go outside instead as the entire weekend was down. Whatever the case, while extremely disappointing for Fox this isn't dire. War carries a budget $20M less than Dawn and with Matt Reeves leaving the franchise and War have a good mix of finality and future movie set-up to it there's a good time to revaluate what to do with the franchise. I certainly think this result will push them to make a more straight Planet of the Apes remake in this universe. At the very least the film should hold well with an A- rating on Cinemascore, but unfortunately it's underperforming across the world as well so it just is going to be a repeat of Star Trek Beyond where a good reviewed third film pails in comparison to the second.

• This is the week of underperforming as Spider-Man: Homecoming has the dubious honor of having the worst second weekend drop in MCU history, dropping 61.4% to come in at #2 with $45.2M. Okay first, some context. The film it beat was Captain America: The First Avenger which dropped 60.7% for its second weekend. Also for the MCU films opening over $100M, all of them (except for The Avengers) dropped between 55% - 60%. So while Homecoming is certainly the worst drop, it's not the worst by a mile and stays close to the general range of drops for MCU films opening over $100M. Still though it felt like Spider-man would be different, especially on the heels of Amazing Spider-man 2 which Homecoming had an eerily similar drop too. So why despite being the best reviewed Spider-man film since the original Spider-man 2 did this face such a steep drop? Well while I theorized franchise fatigue for War for the Planet of Apes I'm putting the blame squarely on it for this film's drop. Let's not forget this is our third Spider-man actor in one decade and our second reboot in 6 years. I think the telling evidence is in the initial Friday to Saturday drop. On Friday the film grossed $50M and many predictors thought that indicated a $130M+ opening but it dropped a decent amount on Saturday and Sunday. I think that $50M is the core audience, the ones there for everything Spider-man. The rest of the country is a little more hesitant and a little burned out. Still to be fair that "hesitancy" still amounts to a $200M domestic haul for the film and an almost $500M haul worldwide in just two weeks. Marvel and Sony aren't panicking but it's still telling for the industry as a whole that two critically beloved franchises aren't performing like studios wanted.

• Yet another well reviewed film to underperform this weekend and this time I have to eat my own words as The Big Sick expanded to over 2,000 theaters this week and only managed to get to #5 with $7.6M. Now to be fair this is an indie film that probably cost less than $5M to make and was bought by Amazon for $12M, so the stakes are low for the film itself. However as for what it represents it's not as pleasant. For one it was hopeful that, like Get Out, a film in a comfortable genre that's pushing a more diverse narrative would be a bigger hit. Secondly for Amazon this clearly was their attempt to distribute their first major crowdpleasing blockbuster. They've had incredible success with their Oscar plays both in the awards campaigns and in their box office runs, and leading up to the weekend Big Sick felt right on track, with crazy good per theater averages. Amazon has really stepped up as direct competition to Netflix in terms of getting more interesting films, mostly due to their insistence of respecting the 90 day window for VOD and pushing for theatrical releases. Filmmakers appreciate that and Netflix's dump the film and see what happens model is really starting to affect the filmmakers who work with them. Amazon could have scored huge points in that fight this weekend as Big Sick feels exactly like the kind of film Netflix would buy, quietly release, and then just exist in the massive library. Still Big Sick's run isn't over by any means. It's good reviews means it should have good word of mouth and a strong life, but it's just not the savior for romantic comedies and indie romance films like many hoped it would be.

• Well at least Wish Upon performed exactly like I expected. Sure it underperformed too, opening to a terrible #7 spot with $5.5M, but that's not exactly surprising for a terribly reviewed gimmick horror film with very little marketing that was released in the summer. Surprisingly this was the first straight up, mass appeal horror film from Broad Green, which typically releases more indie fair like Terrence Malick movies and 99 Homes. It's clear after both STX and Broad Green tried to make their own cheap horror movie this year (not cheap enough as Wish Upon cost $12M and will likely not even reach that low budget) that horror has become the go-to way to justify your costs for more risky investments. The Blumhouse model really is starting to infest every avenue of the indie scene.

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	$386,574,390	$859,099,641	$200M	11
Alien: Covenant	$73,895,945	$231,990,792	$97M	8
Wonder Woman	$380,686,078	$764,886,078	$149M	7

Notable Film Closings

Title	Domestic Gross	Worldwide Gross	Budget
Beauty and the Beast (2017)	$504,014,165	$1,260,998,565	$160M
The Fate of the Furious	$225,764,765	$1,238,764,765	$250M
Logan	$226,277,068	$616,218,538	$97M

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 17, 2017 at 11:56PM by mi-16evil http://ift.tt/2ty0xvQ