Box Office Week: Crazy Rich Asians has an incredible second weekend at #1 with $25M, a drop of just 5.7%. The Happytime Murders flops at #3 with $10M on a $40M budget. Global Road has another bomb with A.X.L. opening at #9 with $2.9M, the same week financiers took control of the company.

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Rank	Title	Domestic Gross (Weekend)	Worldwide Gross (Cume)	Week #	Percentage Change	Budget
1	Crazy Rich Asians	$25,010,000	$83,917,947	2	-5.7%	$30M
2	The Meg	$13,030,000	$408,600,646	3	-38.4%	$130M
3	The Happytime Murders	$10,020,000	$10,020,000	1	N/A	$40M
4	Mission: Impossible - Fallout	$8,000,000	$538,700,660	5	-25.7%	$178M
5	Disney's Christopher Robin	$6,340,000	$112,728,783	4	-28.5%	$75M

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Notable Box Office Stories:

• Crazy Rich Asians - Ugh, I hate the word "Crazy" in the title; just sitting there tempting me. Well this weekend was insane, astonishing, incredible, unimaginable, and all those other lovely synonyms as Crazy Rich Asians dropped just 5.7% to come in #1 again with $25M. As of right now that puts the film in the top 30 best drops for a film opening in over 3,000 theaters. Even more interesting is that only three films in the top 30 of that list opened in summer (CRA, Mother's Day, and Shrek) with the others opening in winter where small openings with incredible holds are far more normal. Even more impressive both Mother's Day (+32.5%) and Shrek (+0.3%) had second weekends with a holiday boost with Mother's Day falling on...well Mother's Day weekend and Shrek using Memorial Day to get all the kids in the theater. It should also be noted that this is one of those times actuals will make a big difference as the film could easily jump much higher on the list with just a few extra $100Ks that will be determined. This is an amazing achievement for the film and puts it right above where The Help was at in its domestic run by this point ($76.8M vs $71.3M) and that film closed to a massive $176M domestic in a similar August/September run. If that's the case, not only is $150M domestic easily in sights but it could very well pass $200M. This year and last have been remarkable at showing the staying power a cultural moment movies like Wonder Woman or Black Panther can be. Crazy Rich Asians has tapped into something and it's about to mine that rich vein for all it's worth.
• The Happytime Murders - Sometimes a film is in production for years and it comes out and you wonder how could this have ever taken so long? And then sometimes a film is in production for years and it comes out and you think, yeah I see why no one wanted to make this. I think the latter is the case for The Happytime Murders which finished a 10 year development run only to open at #3 with $10M on a $40M budget. The film has been a passion project for Brian Henson, son of Jim Henson, who directed a couple beloved minor hits with The Muppets in the 90s with A Muppet Christmas Carol and Muppet Treasure Island. But after Disney bought The Muppets he left the major stuff behind and helped fund Henson Alternative which focused on harder edged Muppet material for comedy clubs, internet and TV such as the show No, You Shut Up!. But Happytime Murders was the real jewel for Brian Henson, a hard-R puppet crime comedy that would showcase the range of muppets. The film was originally pitched all the way back in 2008 as concept art started to gain buzz online. However despite attracting talent like Cameron Diaz the studios always got scared at the cost. Henson wasn't just interested in making Muppets more naughty. He also loves to push technology and he wanted to use a healthy sized budget to create new dazzling effects (Brian Henson helped create the famous bicycle scene in Muppets Take Manhatten). However, after the success of Deadpool he finally cobbled enough indie producers and got the ever swinging STX to distribute.
• The Happytime Murders (cont.) - But much to the surprise of many (myself included) the film's trailer made it quickly apparent this film was much more like The Heat and less like Who Framed Roger Rabbit. On premiere critics were none too pleased, some calling it the worst movie of the year. Audiences agree savaging it with a C- on Cinemascore. Not too surprising as the marketing was all over the place, never settled on whether to brand this as a McCarthy vehicle or on the gimmick (hell I even saw one YouTube ad this week with no puppets in it at all). With a budget of over $40M and it looking very unlikely to hold well this is going to be another costly flop for STX and the investors. I know I went longer on this than many of you probably expected but this film fascinates me and to see it dismissed as just a failed Melissa McCarthy vehicle with "why would a studio fund this" commentary is missing the more interesting picture. Brian Henson used his name and his reputation to leverage a complete rebranding of his father's work. He wanted to separate himself from Disney Muppets with this movie and it just didn't work. It's not that shocking Happytime failed. Avenue Q, the heralded raunchy Broadway send-up of Sesame Street, beat Henson to the punch by 15 years. Even the actual Muppets are struggling for relevance with a failed TV show and a rebooted film series that only made it to two films. Alt comedy may want to embrace Henson Alternate but the general audience couldn't care less. And it's those kind of ambitious failures that are the ones I find the most incredible, because in a way you suddenly get why studios pass on films all the time. This one of those times where every studio head that passed on Happytime Murders is going to go into work tomorrow and say "see, I told you it would never work!"
• A.X.L. - Wow, a week where the two big wide releases were a STX film and a Global Road film! How did I ever get so lucky? Well seems Global Road's financial woes are only getting worse as this week saw the release of its YA centric kid befriends military robotic dog movie (that old chestnut) which opened horrendously to #9 with $2.9M. While the film reportedly carries a budget of just $10M, that opening is so bad it could very well not even cross into the 8 digit range by the time it closes. This comes at the worst time as banks took financial control of the company this week do to poor sales, particularly after their big tentpole Hotel Artemis bombed. The film company needed a whopping $200M in financing to continue operations which it did not get. The company also pulled the Johnny Depp film City of Lies from its September theatrical release with no plans of a future date. The Chinese backed company hoped to make a major play into American markets but after a string of flops could easily be Chapter 11 by the end of the week. Pretty crazy rise and fall for a company that broke out by producing major acclaimed films like Spotlight and Nightcrawler only to be the living dead less than 5 years later.

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​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 #
Avengers: Infinity War	$678,681,680	$2,045,986,438	$315M	18
Deadpool 2	$318,365,417	$733,919,836	$110M	15
Solo: A Star Wars Story	$213,588,649	$392,669,731	$275M	14
Hereditary	$44,047,464	$79,314,829	$10M	12
Incredibles 2	$597,066,966	$1,140,966,966	$200M	11
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom	$413,025,695	$1,295,525,695	$170M	10
Ant-Man and the Wasp	$211,470,699	$544,070,699	$162M	8
Teen Titans Go! To The Movies	$27,738,839	$36,938,839	$10M	5

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Notable Film Closings

Title	Domestic Gross (Cume)	Worldwide Gross (Cume)	Budget
Unfriended: Dark Web	$8,783,985	$9,554,269	$1M

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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 (which have recently been updated).

Submitted August 27, 2018 at 08:29PM by mi-16evil https://ift.tt/2PIv72m