Box Office Week: While it took #1 The Predator flops opening at just $24M. A Simple Favor does okay at #3 with $16M. White Boy Rick underwhelms at #4 with $8.8M. Unbroken: Path to Redemption bombs at #9 with $2.3M. Avengers: Infinity War finally closes to $678M domestic and $2.04B.

Rank	Title	Domestic Gross (Weekend)	Worldwide Gross (Cume)	Week #	Percentage Change	Budget
1	The Predator	$24,000,000	$54,727,235	1	N/A	$88M
2	The Nun	$18,200,000	$228,676,325	2	-66.2%	$30M
3	A Simple Favor	$16,050,000	$19,550,000	1	N/A	$20M
4	White Boy Rick	$8,800,000	$8,800,000	1	N/A	$29M
5	Crazy Rich Asians	$8,700,000	$187,451,904	5	-33.8%	$30M

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Notable Box Office Stories:

• The Predator - I think it's safe to say that the extremely bumpy road it took to get The Predator all the way to its weak #1 debut with $24M was probably not worth it. The film, intended to turn The Predator series from cult favorites into a major event series, had the worst live-action debut for a film in 4,000 theaters, beating previous winner The Mummy's record by $7M less. That $24M opening is also just under the the $24.7M opening of the 2010 film Predators but The Predator carries a budget well over 2x that of Predators and has a much more major marketing budget. It also scored a terrible C+ rating on Cinemascore and was critically savaged so don't expect great legs to save this one either. If there's one film this opening most resembles it's the 2015 film Fantastic Four. Both are films that attempted to relaunch a franchise but studio troubles and creative infighting created messes of movies that ended up opening terribly and getting C+ Cinemascores. At least Fantastic Four though didn't have to deal with openly casting a sexual assaulter, so...that's something. Even before the major controversy everything about The Predator's production seemed to be a nightmare. Shane Black, who is not only a very popular and acclaimed writer/director but also acted in the original Predator, was brought on alongside his old writing partner Fred Dekker to bring this franchise back to life. However it's clear that while Shane Black thought he was making a Shane Black movie, the man who hired hi, John Davis (who's produced every Predator film), thought he was making a John Davis movie. The result by all accounts was a nightmare shoot including an entire rewrite and reshooting of the final action sequence after poor test screenings which ballooned the budget to $88M (and could be more like $100M+ before tax breaks).
• The Predator (2018) (cont.) - Then of course just a week before the film was to come out it was revealed that one of the stars of the film Olivia Munn discovered a small role in the film was played by Steven Wilder Striegel, a register sex offender who tried to lure a teenage girl online in 2010. Even worse Striegel was Black's friend who he gave the role to, he failed to inform the cast and crew of his conviction, and the role was of a leering harassing man playing opposite Munn who has been vocal about her own abuse in the industry. The blowback was quick and while the scene was cut Black did little to mitigate the situation by first defending his choice and then apologizing a short time later. These sorts of controversies are always tough to gauge on the actual performance of a film but it certainly did the film no favors, not to mention a potentially brewing controversy over the film's bizarre treatment of autism. More importantly these controversies tarnish what little hope there was for the proposed two sequels to be directed by Black. Now The Predator just sits there, a $88M headache that just keeps getting worse. Maybe it'll scrape up enough overseas to get past the point of profitability (with an a reported $120M P&A budget I doubt it) but this whole experience should be a warning sign. Some franchise just aren't meant for the big time and maybe turning them into the next big thing isn't your responsibility. Maybe you should just make a good movie first.
• A Simple Favor - It's always interesting when a director suddenly changes course on their career and even more interesting when they do it as quietly as Paul Fieg who's latest film A Simple Favor opened at #3 with a solid $16M. Fieg who is notable as a director of big female driven studio comedies like Bridesmaids and Spy decided to follow-up a similar headache inducing production and controversial film that didn't do very well commercially, Ghostbusters (2016), with a much smaller $20M mystery-thriller film. The elegant throwbacky posters and trailers really don't play up Fieg at all, instead focusing on the major cast trio of Anna Kendrick, Blake Lively, and most notably Henry Golding as this is just his first film to come out after his major debut in Crazy Rich Asians (well done him on having his first two films ever being in the top five at the same time). However that wattage didn't really translate to a huge opening and with okay to solid reviews and a B+ Cinemascore this one just isn't going to quite capture that Gone Girl/Girl on the Train beginning of fall magic. A film like that needs a really big splashy debut in some way and this is all just too muddled and quiet to really go anywhere. It will also probably be a blip for Fieg who has such major studio headache inducing titles on his upcoming roster like The Heat 2 and Play-Doh: The Movie (god I wish that last one was a bit).
• White Boy Rick - It's quite something that almost thirty years after Goodfellas came out so many films are still trying to be the next Goodfellas. Well it seems White Boy Rick probably won't be it, or at very least will have to find its audience outside of the multiplex because the latest true crime film epic opened to a pretty weak $8.8M at #4. The film tells the true of Richard Wershe Jr., who became a major hustler as a young teen and ended up being the youngest FBI informant ever at the age of 14 before ending up with a life sentence for dealing cocaine. While Rick is the main protagonist played by newcomer Richie Merritt, the big name draw was Matthew McConaughey who plays his father. McConaughey has had a tough time recapturing the magic of his 2010-2014 run with major bombs like The Dark Tower and Free State of Jones and never-was like Gold and Sea of Trees. Unfortunately with middling reviews and a weak opening I don't think this will be the one. It's also at an interesting time for its director Yann Damange who by some accounts was set to direct Bond 25, then was fired when Danny Boyle came on, and now may be rehired after Boyle's exit. That's kind of the thing with this film, it's probably more notable as a moment in three careers but as an event itself it really just isn't much of anything. Classic September release.
• Unbroken: Path to Redemption - There's something about bizarre sequels no one asked for that fascinates me. Max 2, S. Darko, the endless VOD Jarhead sequels. Who makes these and why is often interesting but hard to figure out. So when I saw a poster for Unbroken: Path to Redemption I was deeply intrigued. Who demanded a sequel to Unbroken, the film directed by Angelina Jolie that's most famous as a failed Oscar campaign? Well turns out the first Unbroken was actually more of a passion project for producer Matthew Baer who became fascinated by the true story of Louis Zamperini, an olympic runner who was a POW during World War II who became an evangelist Christian after he returned home from the war, in the 1980s and has been trying to get a film made since. And while Baer could get major talent for his first film the financial and critical disappointment meant for the sequel he would have to rely on that old reliable Christian movie factory Pure Flix and the director of God's Not Dead 1 and 2, Harold Cronk. The results as expected were par for the course for a PureFlix film: awful reviews, bad box office, and a great A rating on Cinemascore. There's not much to the actual box office here but it is fascinating to see these major movies take their sequels to small indie houses. Hey John Davis, maybe the next Predator movie can be about a Predator converting to Christianity. I bet Pure Flix will give you a whole $10 to make it.

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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 (Weekly)	Domestic Gross (Cume)	Worldwide Gross (Cume)	Budget	Week #
Deadpool 2	$10,320	$318,468,882	$734,198,183	$110M	18
Solo: A Star Wars Story	$32,885	$213,765,754	$392,948,012	$275M	17
Incredibles 2	$1,755,520	$605,633,025	$1,183,433,025	$200M	14
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom	$560,225	$416,282,080	$1,303,182,080	$170M	13
Ant-Man and the Wasp	$814,590	$215,410,791	$617,010,791	$162M	11
Teen Titans Go! To The Movies	$264,527	$29,153,577	$48,153,577	$10M	8
Mission: Impossible - Fallout	$5,503,570	$216,135,337	$760,935,337	$178M	8

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Notable Film Closings

Title	Domestic Gross (Cume)	Worldwide Gross (Cume)	Budget
Avengers: Infinity War	$678,807,703	$2,046,435,781	$315M
Tag	$54,547,470	$77,747,470	$28M
Uncle Drew	$42,469,946	$44,337,320	$18M

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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 September 17, 2018 at 10:16PM by mi-16evil https://ift.tt/2Owe6r2