Box Office Week: In a tight race The Equalizer 2 comes in #1 with $35.8M, while Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again opens close at #2 with $34.3M. Unfriended: Dark Web disappoints coming in at #9 with $3.5M, but at a budget of only $1M already triples its budget.

Rank	Title	Domestic Gross (Weekend)	Worldwide Gross (Cume)	Week #	Percentage Change	Budget
1	The Equalizer 2	$35,825,000	$39,125,000	1	N/A	$62M
2	Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again	$34,380,000	$55,080,000	1	N/A	$75M
3	Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation	$23,150,000	$144,105,776	2	-47.5%	$80M
4	Ant-Man and the Wasp	$16,126,000	$353,524,292	3	-44.6%	$200M
5	Incredibles 2	$11,520,000	$940,435,440	6	-29.2%	$170M

Notable Box Office Stories:

• The Equalizer 2 - This week was a very tight race between two very different sequels as The Equalizer 2 just barely managed to snag #1 with $35.8M. It also just barely topped the opening of the previous film which opened to $34.1M in 2014. While a sequel to a film that grossed $100M domestic is not all that surprising what makes this film so unique is that it is in fact the first sequel in Denzel Washington's career. While the 63 year old actor has certainly done his fair share of Oscar plays and clear one-offs (I mean I would watch John Q 2, but that's just me) there's certainly been franchise potential, including twice playing a detective from the first book of a long running series (Devil in a Blue Dress and The Bone Collector). But Equalizer for some reason seemed to be the one to finally make it to screen. For all the ones to materialize this makes the most sense as it's directed by Antoine Fuqua who got Denzel his second Oscar win for Training Day and directed the first Equalizer as well as 2016's The Magnificent Seven. And these films fall perfectly in line with Denzel's late career action starers. The sequel also doesn't take too much of a budget leap, from $55M to $62M, so opening around the same puts it in good standing. However the film's time slot is where it seems the studio could have made a fatal error. Equalizer 1 came out in September, one of the doldrums of the movie year and it sat comfortably through that month. Now in the heart July Equailzer 2 is going up against Mission: Impossible - Fallout. Now the M:I films have never been massive blockbusters but they hype for Fallout has been insane and it's looking to easily crush the previous best opening of the series (M:I 2 with $57.8M) and as such could eat into the mostly male audience of Equalizer 2. So even though the film scored a great A rating on Cinemascore, it just might not be enough to give this one the juice to justify the first Denzel triquel....threequel...whatever, Equalizer 3.
• Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again - While the decade long delayed sequel to the 2008 megahit (seriously just wait till you hear how much goddamn money that movie made) didn't crack #1, it did well opening to a very good #2 with $34.3M. That's well above the $27.7M opening of the first film and places it in the top 5 musical domestic openings. As I said you probably don't realize that while 2008 seemed to be dominated by the start of the current superhero wave with hits like The Dark Knight (which Mamma Mia! opened against) and Iron Man, there was Mamma Mia! just crushing it. The film did quite well in the US where it grossed $144M but worldwide it grossed over $600M. To put that in context it held the worldwide record for highest grossing musical for 9 years until it was beaten just last year by Beauty and the Beast. Until this year Mamma Mia! was in the top ten highest grossing films in the UK (£68.6M) where it was just barely beaten by Avengers: Infinity War (£70.8M). Overseas the performance was quite good including an expected major opening in the UK with $13.1M. So yes while the title of this film kinda feels like a beleaguered sigh, this film is here to play. Part of that is evidenced by the film's fairly large $75M budget which clearly went mostly to music licensing, A-lister paychecks, and singing lessons for Brosnan. The film also is clearly marketing directing to women and gay men with the inclusion of Cher, who comes into the trailer at the end like Spider-man in the Civil War trailer. The hype for the film felt a little lukewarm until the positive praise from critics who found it a relief in the very dark and action driven summer months. It's clear that counter-programming angle worked as a whopping 83% of the audience was female, which combined with the A- rating on Cinemascore means this film could very easily weather the summer months. And let's not forget that The Greatest Showman **is still running**, proof that musicals are becoming a quiet juggernaut that rewards repeat viewings and fun sing-along releases. Goddamn it, now I gotta go watch it! 🎵Waterloo! Promise to love you for ever more...🎵
• Unfriended: Dark Web - While this weekend saw three releases of a first sequel, not all of them succeeded as Unfriended: Dark Web, the sequel to 2015 surprise cyber horror hit, did not perform as well opening to a pretty low #9 with $3.4M. The first Unfriended received much attention and some critical praise for it's somewhat unique premise of being a horror film done entirely one computer screen. The film built good buzz and ended up grossing $34M domestic and $64M worldwide which on a budget of just $1M is quite impressive. Well profitable horror can never die so here comes Dark Web complete with the biggest buzzword of 2013 and the results are incredibly different, opening 5x lower than the first. Also let's not forget most horror films make about half their overall results in the first weekend. It's clear the producers of the franchise, Blumhouse, didn't even have much faith that people would want to go through this gimmick again as the first was distributed by Universal this was released by their own Blumhouse Tilt brand which focuses on smaller releases with big VOD pushes. And of course it must be noted that despite opening so much lower than the first this film cost just $1M, so already it's surpassed its budget 3x over. While the marketing was probably 10x - 20x that, it's still a very cheap movie to make and with VOD being a very likely revenue stream for them it's not like this is some studio ending flop. This is the Blumhouse model at work, make it cheap so when it fails it still kinda doesn't really fail. It's pretty ingenious if a little cynical.

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 #
The Greatest Showman	$174,313,504	$434,489,163	$84M	32
Black Panther	$699,931,862	$1,346,596,927	$200M	24
A Quiet Place	$187,745,159	$332,304,245	$17M	16
Avengers: Infinity War	$676,835,522	$2,043,009,571	$315M	13
Deadpool 2	$317,107,440	$732,911,644	$110M	10
Solo: A Star Wars Story	$212,395,307	$385,406,465	$275M	9
Hereditary	$43,474,996	$73,752,067	$10M	7
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom	$383,904,505	$1,179,012,188	$170M	5

Notable Film Closings

Title	Domestic Gross (Cume)	Worldwide Gross (Cume)	Budget
Lobster Cop	$85,172	$10,294,569	UNK
Hotel Artemis	$6,708,147	$8,334,509	$15M

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 July 23, 2018 at 08:29PM by mi-16evil https://ift.tt/2NCUhxd