Box Office: "Bullet Train" off to slow-ish start, "Bodies Bodies Bodies" big in limited release
Monday, August 8, 2022 at 11:00PM by Nathaniel R
With no major competition, the action flick Bullet Train (reviewed) easily won the weekend but the results were mixed. $30 million is a good opening but is it good for this sort of film? That's debatable. Brad Pitt titles sometimes develop good legs so the second weekend hold (or lack thereof) will tell us more...
| Weekend Box Office August 5th-7th 🔺 = new or expanding / ★ = Recommended links if we've written about it |
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| WIDE (OVER 800 SCREENS) | PLATFORM RELEASES |
 BULLET TRAIN |
 BODIES BODIES BODIES |
| 1 🔺 BULLET TRAIN $30 *NEW* |
1 MARCEL THE SHELL WITH SHOES ON $345k (cum. $4.9) |
| 2 DC SUPER PETS $11 (cum. $44.9) |
2 🔺 BODIES BODIES BODIES $226k *NEW* |
| 3 ★ NOPE $8.5 (cum. $97.9) |
3 HANSAN: RISING DRAGON (South Korea) $144k (cum. $432k) |
| 4 THOR: LOVE & THUNDER $7.7 (cum. $316.1) |
4 ★ EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE $138k (cum. $69.5) |
| 5 MINIONS: THE RISE OF GRU $7.1 (cum. $334.5) |
5 HALLEJULAH LEONARD COHEN... (Doc) $111k (cum. $486k) |
| 6 ★ TOP GUN MAVERICK $7 (cum. $662.4) |
6 ★ FIRE OF LOVE (Doc) $81k (cum. $711k) |
| 7 WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING $5.6 (cum. $64.6) | 7 I LOVE MY DAD $54K *NEW* |
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8🔺 EASTER SUNDAY $5.4 *NEW* |
8 ★ A LOVE SONG $20k ($41k) |
| 9 ★ ELVIS $3.9 (cum. $136.4) |
9 ★🔺 SHARP STICK $19k (41k) |
| 10 THE BLACKPHONE $1.5 (cum. $85.9) |
10 FIRE (France) $15k ($149k) |
| 11 JURASSIC WORLD DOMINION $1.1 (cum. $371.8) |
11 ★ RESURRECTION $15k (cum. $140k) |
| 12 VENGEANCE $725k (cum. $3.2) |
12 ★ MY OLD SCHOOL $12k (cum. $35k) |
WIDE RELEASE NOTES
The Jo Koy starring Filipino-American comedy Easter Sunday had a fairly low profile, but took in $5 million in its first week. It was relatively cheap to produce though so if it develops any legs it might be a hit. As hard as it is to believe, Variety says this is the only major studio comedy released this summer. Studo comedies used to be big draws.
If you don't adjust for inflation Top Gun Maverick just passed Titanic to become the 7th highest grosser ever. The next films in its sites are Avengers: Infinity War (another $16 million so it could get there) and Black Panther (another $38 million so that seems far less likely). Just how long is this going to stay in the top ten. It's already at 11 weeks!
LIMITED RELEASE NOTES
A24's latest horror picture Bodies Bodies Bodies opened on just six screens but had the highest per screen average for any movie so we'll see how it does next week when it presumably adds theaters.
We really thought Marcel the Shell was going wide but just as it was *almost* there, it lost steam on per screen averages and lost a bunch of theaters. Still it's approaching $5 million to date which is good!
NEXT WEEKEND
The Diane Keaton comedy Mack & Rita, the stuck-on-a-hightower thriller Fall, and the anime picture Inu-Oh of which more in the next paragraph, the Finnish movie Girl Picture, and Aubrey Plaza as Emily the Criminal all enter theaters but Bullet Train this week was the last "big studio" picture of the summer; the majors are still failing to deliver new movies to theaters on a weekly basis.
What did you see these past few days?
At home we watched The Sandman on Netflix. In theaters we dutifully saw Bullet Train (always there for Brad Pitt, for better and worse) but also hit the East Coast premiere of GKids latest Japanese acquisition Inu-Oh which is wildly creative and mesmerizing. Neverthless it won't be an easy sell with Academy Awards voters despite the clear opening in the Animated Feature Race given that so many of the big US titles (thus far at least) have underwhelmed either qualitatively or in terms of public enthusiasm.
Reader Comments (10)
Saw PREY on Hulu and seems like it was the talk of my twitter timeline as well this weekend. I've never seen any of the Predator films, but too many people were talking about it for me to ignore. Glad I did. It was thrilling and well-done!
Also saw BULLET TRAIN. Some fun parts, but not sure the sum of it was worth it.
A great short film on MUBI called Nest and a re-watch of The Pied Piper on Disney+ (which is kind of fucked up) and on Sunday, Nope (great film).
I really want to see Prey.
Question on the Animated Feature race (given it was mentioned here): did SPELLBOUND go straight to streaming on the weekend, or did it get a qualifying release in a cinema somewhere? (It was the film I was predicting to be the most likely winner at this early stage (given the talent behind it), so wanted to know if it was still eligible.)
When did a 30 million plus debut for a non franchise 58 yr old star led product become a disappointment.
Ryan, I also have never seen a Predator film and I also really enjoyed Prey. Amber Midthunder is fantastic.
A24 is pushing Marcel the Shell to qualify for Best Animated Feature, per Anne Thompson. I can foresee it winning most of the critics' awards in that category.
Top Gun: Maverick has been so successful that I'm starting to think it's going to get some awards love, and not just in the sound categories. With its throwback/legacy success it could sneak a best picture nom, and maybe even best actor.
Cash - I'm currently predicting it for nominations in the following categories: Picture, Cinematography, Editing, Visual FX, Sound and Song so 6 nominations.
This summer has been good for studios but could you imagine how much better they could have done if they actually released more movies during this season??! "Bullet Train" being the last major studio movie release at the beginning of August is just crazy.
Anthony M -- right? I think they're finally waking up that they shouldn't have listened to wall street for all those years about streamers (how did any of them think that subscription dollars were going to make up for $50 million to $1 billion *on each individual film*during the year?
But now that they're waking up... well movies don't get made over night so hopefully they get creative or ballsy with actually pushing some unlikely films that could have great word of mouth (like Everything Everywhere...)