Box Office Week: Over four day weekend, Aladdin opens to an excellent $112.7M at #1. Meanwhile Brightburn underwhelms at #5 with $9.5M and Booksmart falters at #6 with $8.6M.

* all numbers are for four-day Memorial Day weekend

Rank	Title	Domestic Gross (Weekend)	Worldwide Gross (Cume)	Week #	Percentage Change	Budget
1	Aladdin (2019)	$112,700,000	$233,700,000	1	N/A	$183M
2	John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum	$31,000,000	$182,038,941	2	-56.7%	$55M
3	Avengers: Endgame	$22,300,000	$2,682,931,736	5	-42.5%	$356M
4	Pokemon: Detective Pikachu	$17,275,000	$356,897,622	3	-46.7%	$150M
5	Brightburn	$9,500,000	$17,300,000	1	N/A	$6M

---

Notable Box Office Stories

• Aladdin (2019) - Aladdin this weekend proved just how sick and tired everyone is of these live action Disney remakes as it opened to a meager 4-day holiday haul of $112.7M at #1. I kid of course, because I am a hack. Indeed it was actually a pretty good opening, the fifth best Memorial Day opening and the biggest opening ever for a blue Will Smith movie. Yes genie's out of the sorting hat folks, let's talk about them digital pecs. The road for Aladdin has been an odd one. Perhaps it's no surprise that in a year that sees both the finalization of the Disney/Fox merger and the release of four major live-action remakes/sequels to Disney animation classics that at least one of them would become the poster child for all things Disney ruining cinema. Enter in the first images of the genie in this new adaptation and the internet went buck wild with memes of all sorts. While that seems quaint in a post Sonic the Hedgehog movie trailer world, it combined with the low sales of Dumbo it seemed to make many that this would be the first true unexpected bomb of this Disney remake boom. So why did this make money when so many things seemed troubling?
• Aladdin (2019) (cont.) - Well for one, as I said when Dumbo came out I felt the failure of that film was far more due to the subject matter than an overall disdain for the Disney remake machine. That was based on a film from the 1940s that while I'm sure many of us watched, was probably not watched literally over 1,000 times by most current millennial in the country like say Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and The Lion King were. And let's not forget how good the Memorial Day weekend can be. It gives you a nice holiday, right before school closes and some kids are already done with classes. It makes sense a big expensive kid friendly musical would do well. Also expect a potentially great hold, especially with a great A rating on Cinemascore and the true start of summer break. However the domestic holds will have to do pretty well for two reasons. One this film was mad expensive. $180M is quite a lot even for a big tentpole film. And worse off the film did not perform super well overseas, pulling in a solid but not great $121M. That includes every major market including China where it opened to just $18M. So it will have a long road domestically to get to profitability, but it has a great head start and this films tend to hold very well. At the very least it's a good reminder that the internet can often be ignored on these things and doesn't have the power to meme a film out of existence. Except for Sonic the Hedgehog. That film is screwed.
• Brightburn - The film that dared to ask "what if Superman but bad" did not completely enthrall the audience as it opened fairly low at #5 with $9.5M domestic for the four day weekend. The film that was hyped as from the producing paycheck of James Gunn was a whole Gunn family affair with his cousin and brother writing the screenplay. The film by Sony Pictures Classics was definitely not expecting to be a massive opening weekend and with a pretty low $6M budget the film had a lot of potential to make good money with a hit horror film run. But the issue with that is most horror films need to open over $10M because they drop so quickly (and with a terrible C+ Cinemascore expect the same here) and it definitely felt like Brightburn had more of a marketing push than most. It's hard to say exactly why this failed, whether the premise alone only intrigued a small fan-base or what I think the bigger issue is the release date. The three new releases this weekend were a family friendly Disney film, a teen comedy, and a violent take on the most popular movie genre currently. To me this was a perfect September/October release when people are more friendly to horror films. Of course the problem there is the rare behemoth horror release in IT: Chapter 2 which will choke out most competition. Still Memorial Day feels so strange to me, unless they were going for an attempt to critique/comment on the multiple superhero films that came right before its release. Brightburn will probably find a cult audience and eventually turn a profit (it's too cheap not to) but it shows that just because it's about any superhero/villain doesn't mean people are going to flock to see it.
• Booksmart - This is one of those films where you are just kind of bummed out it didn't do well. One of the best reviewed films of the year that's written, directed, and starring women with a good queer main character and is genuinely well received by audiences. And it opens at #6 with $8.6M for the four day weekend. So what happened? Well for one it seems that United Artists Releasing has had a rough go in their new iteration, first with the super bomb Missing Link and then the mediocre performance of The Hustle. Also this is one of those films that just does suffer from no super A-list names involved. Yes Olivia Wilde is the director, but I know many who don't even know that. And the leads are two very funny up-and-comers but going "oh hey isn't that one of the recurring guest stars from What We Do in the Shadows" doesn't sell a ton of tickets to anyone who isn't me. Still what about Superbad? Yeah now an Apatow film, written by Seth Rogen, starring Jonah Hill, Michael Cera, Bill Hader, Seth Rogen, and Emma Stone is a surefire hit but that film made most of those guys. Why wasn't Booksmart the female equivalent of that? I think the reason that film made $121M domestic and this won't (unless it has one of the craziest second lives ever) is because of a really killer trailer. Y'all who weren't in high school then have no goddamn idea how much McLovin jokes I heard before the film came out. That thing was everywhere so when it came out it felt like an event. Booksmart just did not have the marketing prowess or reach to get to that level, so like so many other great teen movies being made right now (seriously we are living in the best time for great teen movies since the 80s imo) like so many of them Booksmart will be discovered on Netflix or Amazon like all the rest.

---

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 #
Captain Marvel	$1,005,833	$425,868,352	$1,127,034,152	$152M	12
Us	$211,845	$174,748,645	$253,848,645	$20M	10

---

Notable Film Closings

Title	Domestic Gross (Cume)	Worldwide Gross (Cume)	Budget
Hellboy	$21,903,748	$40,029,448	$50M
A Madea Family Funeral	$73,257,045	$74,747,725	$20M
Fighting with My Family	$22,958,583	$39,058,583	$11M

---

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).

My Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/Les_Vampires/

Submitted May 28, 2019 at 10:06PM by mi-16evil http://bit.ly/2XjQASg