Box Office: "Good Boys" makes good - did you see it?

With 16 features in wide release -- which is a lot given that there's usually only 10-12 with today's tendency to pack movies on 4,000+ screens -- let's cover the whole field, shall we?  Plus the specialty titles in limited release because we think they're just as, if not more, important on the regular. After the jump the full chart...

Weekend Box Office August 16th-18th (Actuals) 🔺 = new or expanding / ★ = recommended
W I D E	PLATFORM / LIMITED
1 🔺 Good Boys $21.4 *new* REVIEW  ★	1 🔺 Mission Mangal $1.3 on 263 screens *new*

2 Hobbs & Shaw $14.1 (cum. $133.7)  REVIEW  ★	2 🔺 The Peanut Butter Falcon $287k (cum. $583k) on 49 screens REVIEW ★

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Angry Birds, Angrier Superheroes.

Team Red took the box office crown this weekend. No, not the metallic team red but the feathery one. Despite an unfashionably late arrival well past the Angry Birds craze that swept phones years ago, the family audience is insatiable these days. Not that the other Team Red, Iron Man and His Amazing Friends had anything to worry about having crossed a billion globally already. Here at home Captain America Civil War leapfrogged both Zootopia and Batman v Superman this past week to become the 2nd most popular film of the year (Deadpool is still #1... for now). Neighbors 2 and Nice Guys weren't as lucky because adults don't go to movies anymore without their children but wait for streaming (sigh). In platform releases, Love & Friendship (which is so damn enjoyable) and The Lobster had successful if minor expansions. 

Arrows indicate losing or gaining screens

TOP WIDE RELEASES
🔺01 The Angry Birds Movie $39 NEW
▫️02 Captain America: Civil War $33.1 (cum. $347.3)  Review
🔺03 Neighbors 2 $21.7 NEW 
🔺04 The Nice Guys $11.2 NEW Shane Black, Review
🔻05 The Jungle Book $11 (cum. $327.4)  Articles
▫️06 Money Monster $7 (cum. $27.1) Jack O'Connell
🔺07 Darkness $2.3 (cum. $8.4)
🔻08 Zootopia $1.7 (cum. $334.4) Reviewish
🔻09 The Huntsman: Winter's War $1.1 (cum. $46.6) Review
🔻10 Mother's Day $1.1 (cum. $31.2)

TOP TEN LIMITED
Excluding previously wide.
🔺01 The Meddler $777K (cum. $2) Review
🔺02 Love & Friendship $582K (cum. $780K)  Review
🔺03 The Man Who Knew Infinity $550K (cum. $1.6)
🔺04 The Lobster $408K (cum. $1) Reviewish 
🔻05 Sing Street $350K (cum. $2.4) Review, Who's the MVP?
🔺06 A Bigger Splash $338K (cum. $787K)  Reviewish
🔺07 Weiner $85K NEW 
🔺08 Maggie's Plan $66K NEW Review
🔻09 Hologram for a King $65K (cum. $4) Review
🔻10 Compadres $57K (cum. $3.1)

What did you see this weekend?

I caught The Lobster (unmissable in its singularity) and Neighbors 2 (enjoyable if not as funny as the original)

Tim's Toons: A preview of 2016 in animated features

Tim here. Kung Fu Panda 3 opens this weekend, and thus begins one of the most crowded years for animated features in living memory (technically, Norm of the North already kicked things off two weeks ago, but we're all better off consigning that one to the memory hole).

As a public service, I'd like to offer this highly abbreviated guide to some of the animation that will be coming out in the U.S. over the next 11 months. As with every year, there will of course be a healthy number of foreign imports that we can't predict, and hopefully a little indie or two that nobody has heard about yet; best to think of this, maybe, as a handy field guide to clearing your way through the glut of big-ticket studio films about to reign down upon us all.

Lots more Toons after the jump...

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The High Cost of Angry Birds

Tim here. News came out this week that the upcoming feature adaptation of the handheld video game Angry Birds, a Finnish-American co-production set to be animated by Sony Picture Imageworks, has the eyebrow-raising price tag of €180 million, or a bit more than $190 million. That's not quite as dumbfounding a total as it sounds: it includes the marketing budget, something virtually never reported in advance, and the total production budget is a much lowlier €80 million. Which still makes it the most expensive movie ever made in Finland by a factor of almost ten.

No matter how you subdivide it, though, that's a huge pile of money that Sony and Rovio Entertainment are throwing at a 90-minute video game commercial. My current suspicion: most of that money is earmarked for building a time machine that transports audience members back to 2011, the last time that making an Angry Birds feature film made any sense whatsoever.

Lukewarm off the Presses: Tetris and Angry Birds Movies

All our jokes are coming true...

Margaret here, reminiscing back to when The LEGO Movie was first announced and we were all so dismissive and full of wisecracks. Hollywood must really be out of ideas, we said. What's next, a Tetris movie? 

Well, it's official: a big-budget, live-action Tetris movie is coming and there's nothing we can do about it. Cue the death knell for original stories! Also in the pipeline is an Angry Birds animated feature, which in addition to being less than inspired might also a bit past its moment. Sony has rounded up an enticing group of voice actors including Maya Rudolph, Peter Dinklage, Kate McKinnon, Danielle Brooks, Jason Sudeikis, Bill Hader, and Danny McBride; even so, the concept sounds destined for corporate tie-in mediocrity. Then again, that's what many predicted for The LEGO Movie, which turned out to be much better than it had any right to be. 

Perhaps even for the Tetris movie it's not too late. As yet there is no fixed plot or cast attached to the Tetris project. Brainstorm with me! How might we spin this in our favor? 

To start, here are some ideas for a Tetris movie in our favorite genre here at The Film Experience: Women Who Lie to Themselves™

• Julianne Moore is a celebrated game engineer, but in her personal life she just can't seem to make things fit. (Must include at least one extended crying jag.)
• Lifelong friends Juliette Lewis and Emayatzy Corinealdi have inherited a factory that produces Tetriminos--apparently the official term for Tetris pieces-- and must rise to the challenge of managing it together.
• Michelle Pfeiffer is a writer who, Adaptation-style, is tasked with writing a screenplay for a Tetris movie and grapples with artistic integrity and personal demons.

Pitch your ideas for a TFE-friendly Tetris movie in the comments!