Box Office Week: The Hitman's Bodyguard is #1 again with $10M, topping the worst box office weekend since 2001. Adding to the historic low was Leap! opening pitifully at #3 with $5M, Wind River having a weak wide expansion at #4 with $4.4M, and Birth of the Dragon bombing at #9 with $2.5M.

Rank	Title	Domestic Gross (Weekend)	Worldwide Gross (Cume)	Week #
1	The Hitman's Bodyguard	$10,050,000	$46,158,824	2
2	Annabelle: Creation	$7,350,000	$215,080,384	3
3	Leap!	$5,015,500	$63,208,292	1
4	Wind River	$4,410,610	$10,995,493	4
5	Logan Lucky	$4,366,894	$16,023,712	2

** Notable Box Office Stories:**

• I'll be honest and tell you I have really nothing to say about The Hitman's Bodyguard which came in at #1 with $10M, mostly out of default. It didn't hold super well (dropped 53%) and it isn't all that exciting narratively so let's talk about the real story here: the truly awful weekend. This was the worst box office weekend since September 21-23, 2001 when looking at the top 10 and overall ticket sales. Remember that 2001 weekend was only two weekends after 9/11 where the biggest wide release was Glitter which opened at #11. Over all this weekend only grossed $66.9M where last year the total gross for the equivalent weekend was $132M. Now it's pretty clear what caused this disasterous weekend as it was just a perfect storm of terrible. The outside factors are extremely obvious with Saturday taking a big dip for the McGregor v Mayweather fight (which managed to be #8 with $2.5M at the box office through special event cinema screenings), then Sunday was the Game of Thrones season finale, and through the whole weekend the biggest US hurricane in a decade hit the south. There's also the complete lack of any real competition, with the biggest new release being a long delayed animated movie with no marketing (see below). Even worse is next weekend seems to hold no respite, as Hitman's Bodyguard will likely be #1 again but in the single digits this. It will be interesting to see just how much environmental factors v. lack of choice played into this horrible weekend and if next weekend can take the shit crown. At least WB must be happy. The more dire the box office gets the more the predictions for IT's opening weekend keep rising, as audiences become hungrier for something to watch.

• We are about to see two Weinstein releases in a row of long shuffled projects. This week is Leap! a Canadian/French animated film that the Weinsteins bought earlier this year for US distribution (the film is called Ballerina in the rest of the world) but have shuffled around more times than a cup and ball game before coming in this weekend at #3 with $5M. First the film was scheduled for March, then April, then it very bizarrely got a voice cast shuffle with Nat Wolff replacing Dan DeHann and adding in the voices of Mel Brooks and Kate McKinnon, and then dumping it in August. It's not a secret the once mighty Weinsteins are struggling for cash right now and moves like this, Tulip Fever, Amityville, and recently the move of Mary Mageldene from December 2017 to Easter 2018 shows that the company is desperate for a hit and trying any and all release strategies before giving up and burying their films. It's especially weird since the film has been a solid success overseas, grossing almost $60M mostly in France and the UK. Ultimately the Weinsteins have become the worst studio you want to be associated with right now, because they seem to consistently have no clue what their release strategy is and how they plan to dig themselves out of the hole they've made.

• Speaking of Weinstein's this week they had a film that seemed poised to expand well but despite great reviews Wind River opened in wide release to a weak #4 with $4.4M. The film is the directorial debut of Taylor Sheridan and the release was clearly intended to capture the same small magic as his previous film (as writer) Hell or High Water, which never opened above 2,000 theaters but managed to hold well through the August months and even score a late Best Picture nomination. Oddly by expanding so much it seems the it pulled all the wind out of the sails, as the film was scoring really good per theater averages for its first two weekends but this weekend only managed $2,100 which is about the same as Annabelle: Creation did this weekend in 1,500+ theaters on its third weekend. It will be interesting to see how the film fairs next weekend, as it could have lost a lot of the adult audience it was aiming for to the fight and to Game of Thrones. Still it's not looking good and it seems that the minor surprise of Hell or High Water is not something you can just recreate with similar circumstances.

• Another month another controversial whitewashed film fails to live up to box office expectations as Birth of the Dragon opened at #9 to a terrible $2.5M. The film's trajectory has been a fascinating one, as it was hyped going into the 2016 Toronto International Film Festival as the untold story of Bruce Lee's famous fight with a martial arts master Wong Jack Man. However critics soon found out that while the film's cast was real Asian actors and martial artists the film's actual protagonist was Steve McKee (played by Billy Magnussen) a fictional white character with Lee only appearing as second fiddle. The outrage at TIFF was tremendous and the film was quickly re-edited to try and reduce Steve's role as much as possible. However the damage was done and only Blumhouse Tilt and WWE Studios would buy the once promised crowd pleaser. The marketing attempted to showcase just Bruce Lee in the trailers but the damage was done. As soon as critics saw that Steve was still the protagonist despite the recuts they trashed the film and it's placement against McGregor v Mayweather did it no favors. This is an interesting case for just why whitewashing tends to ruin a film's chances. It's never really an active boycott that does, it's more the general toxicity that comes with the accusations that causes studios to backpedal and bury and flounder in their marketing.

• While the US market has been floundering, China has managed to create an extraordinary performance in Wolf Warrior 2, the film that has managed to pass $800M in that country, the second highest single market gross only below the domestic gross of $936M for The Force Awakens. So how exactly did this monstrous hit happen? One of the big reasons is every year during the end of summer China has a protectionist blackout where all foreign releases are banned from cinemas for several weeks. The Chinese market is so hungry for big blockbuster movies, usually from America, that it often begins searching for the next thing. So why then did Wolf Warrior 2, a $30M film, manage to succeed? Part of the appeal seems to be this interesting mix of 80s/90s style American action films mixed with extreme nationalistic ideals presented in the film. Chinese social media has really pushed the film's success as initial opening was pretty low but has just exploded since then with many Chinese film forums being able to talk about nothing but Wolf Warrior 2 all month. Chinese productions tend to either be historical epics or big CGI monster fests and Wolf Warrior 2's focus on modern day grounded action has helped create a unique space for Chinese audiences, one that's definitely benefited from the blackout. However it seems the train has finally slowed down as the foreign film blackout is now over and Valerian topped this weekend with $32M, not a huge sum but enough to unseat the giant. While it now won't pass Force Awakens domestic gross or become the first film to gross $1B in a single country, Wolf Warrior 2 still stands as a fascinating example of just how powerful the Chinese market can be and gives just a taste of what their own cinema will look like in the future.

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	$389,385,268	$862,785,505	$200M	17
Alien: Covenant	$74,249,538	$232,759,064	$97M	14
Wonder Woman	$406,203,061	$806,203,061	$149M	13
Cars 3	$149,089,154	$324,789,154	$175M	11
Baby Driver	$103,288,946	$194,188,946	$34M	9
Spider-man: Homecoming	$318,843,082	$737,043,082	$175M	8
Dunkirk	$172,479,030	$412,179,030	$175M	6
Wolf Warrior 2	$2,445,967	$808,757,882	$175M	4

Notable Film Closings

Title	Domestic Gross	Worldwide Gross	Budget
Transformers: The Last Knight	$130,168,683	$603,968,683	$217M
The Mummy (2017)	$80,101,125	$407,778,013	$125M

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 August 28, 2017 at 10:27PM by mi-16evil http://ift.tt/2xGyNYo