Box Office Week: Justice League opens to disasterous $96M at #1, $70M less than than the opening of Batman v Superman and the worst DCEU opening ever. Meanwhile, Wonder surprises with an excellent $27M opening at #2 while The Star has the worst opening ever for a Sony animated film at #6 with $10M.

Rank	Title	Domestic Gross (Weekend)	Worldwide Gross (Cume)	Week #
1	Justice League	$96,000,000	$281,500,000	1
2	Wonder	$27,050,000	$27,050,000	1
3	Thor: Ragnarok	$21,786,000	$738,082,170	3
4	Daddy's Home 2	$14,800,000	$51,005,447	2
5	Murder on the Orient Express (2017)	$13,800,000	$148,262,459	2

Notable Box Office Stories:

• Justice League - It's a very odd time in modern Hollywood when an opening of $90M+ is a disaster but here we are as Justice League, the fifth DCEU film, became the first film of the franchise to open below $100M, opening at #1 with $96M. Now if you're wondering why that is so terrible then strap in folks, we have a lot to discuss. First off is that the budget of Justice League is now tied with Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End for the second most expensive movie of all time with a reported budget of $300M, so opening with just a third of that is already terrible but then we bring in the comparisons. First in terms of the DCEU the closest preceding film in terms of story and character would be Batman v Superman, a film that struggled to also reach the heights of its expectations but still managed to domestically open $70M more than Justice League just last year ($166M). Then there's Wonder Woman, who occupies 1/5th of the marketable team in the film yet her solo film this year opened higher than the team up film ($104M). Then of course there is comparing it to other films where the failure hurts even more. This should be an opening comparable to The Avengers with the same level of major recognizable characters from the biggest comic competition Marvel has. Instead you can't even come close to the $207.4M opening of that film as this film opened worse than Iron Man ($98.6M), Thor: Rangarok ($122.7M), and opened just $5M above The Amazing Spider-man 2 ($91.6M). This opening should be competing for the best opening of all time, instead it's only the 20th best opening for a superhero film, it isn't in the top 50 best opening weekends, and it just barely made the top 10 best openings in November. Internationally the film also did not perform very well, as it was the 24th best international opening ever with $281.5 and was beaten by Twilight Breaking Dawn Parts 1 ($291.0M) and Part 2 ($340.6M), Iron Man 3 ($372.5M), and fellow DCEU film Batman v Superman ($422.5M). In China especially the film faltered, opening to $51.7M which is less than Avengers: Age of Ultron made in its second weekend in China ($54.3M). That's just $9M more than what Ant-Man opened to in China as wekk. Need I remind you that this is tied for the second most expensive film in history that reportedly needs to make $700M just to break even? If this film has the same hold as BvS then we are looking at a domestic haul under $200M, half the domestic take of Wonder Woman at twice the price. This is not bias, this is not Marvel shill talk, this is not gloating, this is not pandering, this is not a drill. This is one of the worst openings for a major franchise film ever. So what the hell happened?

• Justice League (cont.) - When a disaster happens there's always someone to point the finger too, but like most problems it's more systemic than personal. Let's start with the scapegoat de jour for many fans of the franchise, Joss Whedon who took over for Zack Snyder in terms of directing duties after Snyder left for tragic family reasons. While the word at the time was Whedon was just coming in to complete Snyder's vision it's clear now that's not what happened was the film faced massive reshoots, a complete tonal shift, and Whedon even getting writing credit. Critics were definitely not a fan of the muddled tones but bad reviews didn't stop BvS or Suicide Squad from opening big. A better answer might just be general exhaustion. Three of the four DCEU films before Justice League received negative RT scores (Justice League is currently sitting with a 40% on RT) and BvS and Suicide Squad in particular were featured on many worst of the year lists in 2016. We also saw the way the audience has chosen their preferred tones, as Wonder Woman opened well but unlike previous DECU films bucked the trend and held incredibly well ending with a 4x multiplier after 5 months in theaters. There just was no passion for the brand this time, no urgency or event building that made The Avengers such a smash success. There's also the matter that the film was so rushed, with only two of the six main characters in Justice League having a solo movie beforehand and one of those characters going into the film is dead! Marvel had proven audiences going into Avengers so they knew there would likely be a payoff for that.

• Justice League (cont.) - It will be interesting to watch what happens now as only Aquaman, The Batman, and Wonder Woman 2 seem to be the most likely of the myriad of project to actually reach audiences right now. WB has a big problem on their hands with series that is not working like they wanted BUT one character (Wonder Woman) that audiences love and a franchise that seemed like it would open every film over $100M. Despite my reservations on how the previous DC films held in their longtail they were undeniably profitable and now we are looking at WB possible taking its third big loss of the year on what they thought was the easiest out of the park hit they had. Even worse is just the morale loss of this, as this is supposed to be the capper film to launch a new wave of films piggybacking off a massive hit, but the audience basically gave it the most expensive shrug of all time. This is going to be a big big moment not just for WB but for the industry as a whole. We are living in an age where a $96M opening is a failure because expectations have ballooned budgets and marketing to such a degree that it's become insane. I don't know if we've reached peak blockbuster but Justice League feels like the closest we've come yet. Here is a studio that put their most famous superheroes in their first team up movie in the second most expensive movie ever made with their full studio backing during a time where these films are making the most money ever and they couldn't even top a solo movie from themselves this year that cost half as much. If that doesn't sound like the beginning of a downfall, then what the hell else does?

• Wonder - Well it wasn't all doom and gloom at the box office as Wonder seemed to buck the trend of social issue movies doing really poorly this year, opening to an excellent #2 with $27M. The film about the struggles of a young boy with a facial deformity was projected to open at best to $9M this weekend, but was a surprise last minute hit with ticketing site Fandango saying it had one of the quickest booms in advanced ticket sales they've seen. At CinemaCon, Lionsgate said Wonder was their best audience tested film ever so it's clear they were extremely confident. Apparently armed with this knowledge they sent out major invites to schools across the country offering the film as good teaching tool for kids to learn tolerance, or at least give Lionsgate a whole lotta money in the process. The ploy seems to have worked extremely well. It marks a much needed second hit for young star Jacob Tremblay, who hit it big with critics in 2015 with Room but has appeared in much hated critical and commercials duds like Shut In and The Book of Henry since then. It also marks the best debut for Julia Roberts since 2010's Valentine's Day. The film scored an excellent A+ rating on Cinemascore so Lionsgate was right this film is a major crowd-pleaser, but it may face some tough competition for family attention with Pixar's latest Coco opening next weekend. Still with a budget of $20M Lionsgate has shown some very clever use or marketing and audience engagement that will make Wonder one of the more surprising small scale hits of the year.

• The Star - Trying to squeeze the latest trend into your own model is never a smart idea for success as Sony tried to capitalize on this whole devoted group of Christian audiences thing with their animated take on the birth of Jesus which lead to their worst opening for an animated film ever with The Star opening at #6 with $10M. The film features a surprising all-star cast and a major soundtrack lineup, but could barely open. A big issue is complete lack of marketing as well as bizarre timing placing the film pre-Thanksgiving despite a very clear Christmas theme. The film won't suffer too much as it is also the cheapest Sony animated film as well with a budget of just $20M, but I don't expect this one to stick around even with its good Cinemascore of A.

• Oscar Movie Round-up - Another week and another good expansion for Lady Bird which added 200 theaters this weekend and brought the film to #8 with $2.5M, a per theater average of $10,630. The film is finally going to have a planned wide release next weekend during the Thanksgiving holiday which could mean very good returns as a family choice after all the food and football. Meanwhile Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri also had a great expansion, adding 50 theaters and managed to come in just below Lady Bird at #9 with $1.1M, a per theater average of $21,038. That film though is skewing a lot older than Lady Bird with over 66% of this weekend's audience over the age of 50. Finally the new release this week is Roman J. Israel, Esq. which saw its limited buzz generating release this weekend before it goes wide next week. The film starring Denzel Washington and directed by Nightcrawler director Dan Gilroy seemed to be an early favorite before the festival run, but mediocre reviews have taken the wind out of the sails though Washington is still expected to get a Best Actor nomination. The film opened in 4 theaters this week to $65K, a per theater average of $16,250 which is solid but doesn't bode incredibly well for next week's opening.

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 #
Spider-man: Homecoming	$334,137,958	$880,103,742	$175M	19
Dunkirk	$188,028,882	$525,028,882	$100M	17
IT	$326,748,251	$685,248,251	$35M	10
Blade Runner 2049	$89,250,463	$249,525,500	$150M	7

Notable Film Closings

Title	Domestic Gross	Worldwide Gross	Budget
The Snowman	$6,670,765	$37,270,765	$35M
Suburbicon	$5,775,178	$6,400,529	$25M
Tulip Fever	$2,425,664	$7,884,436	$25M

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 November 20, 2017 at 10:06PM by mi-16evil http://ift.tt/2zVnQq7