LOS ANGELES — A sassy church lady, a group of elite firefighters, an alcoholic detective, some do-gooder Texans and a renegade scientific genius walked into multiplexes on Friday.
Only one grabbed the attention of ticket buyers.
“Tyler Perry’s Boo 2! A Madea Halloween,” with Mr. Perry reprising his gun-toting, moralizing granny, took in about $21.7 million at North American theaters over the weekend. That total gave Mr. Perry his sixth No. 1 opening, bolstering his status as one of the most reliable crowd pullers in moviedom. Even so, initial ticket sales for “Boo 2” (Lionsgate) fell 24 percent behind those for “Boo! A Madea Halloween” last year. “Boo 2” cost roughly $24 million to make.
Ticket sales were terrible for the other newcomers — “Geostorm,” “Only the Brave,” “The Snowman” and “Same Kind of Different as Me” — adding to worries that moviegoing is falling out of fashion, as Americans curl up at home with their Netflix accounts. On the other hand, all of those films but one, “Only the Brave,” a dramatization of a wildfire that killed 19 responders, received abysmal reviews.
“Geostorm” (Warner Bros.) was second for the weekend, taking in an estimated $13.3 million, a failing total for a film that cost roughly $130 million to make, not including tens of millions of dollars in marketing costs, and was released in 3,246 theaters. “Geostorm,” starring Gerard Butler as a scientist racing to save the planet from environmental destruction, likely suffered from a sense of been-there, done-that, coming across as another “The Day After Tomorrow.”
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“Geostorm” was cofinanced by Skydance Media, a company founded by the Oracle heir David Ellison.
Next among the newcomers was “Only the Brave,” which collected about $6 million, according to comScore, which compiles box office data. Black Label Media, a company co-founded by the FedEx heiress Molly Smith, spent about $38 million to make this firefighter drama, which was distributed by Sony Pictures Entertainment. (It has been a bad month for the FedEx family at the movies: Alcon, backed by Ms. Smith’s father, Fred Smith, had a major box office misfire with “Blade Runner 2049.”)
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Sony noted that “Only the Brave” received an A grade in CinemaScore exit polls. “We expect great word of mouth among our core audience,” the studio said in a statement on Sunday.
Receiving a D grade from CinemaScore was “The Snowman” (Universal Pictures), which bombed with $3.4 million in ticket sales. “The Snowman,” which cost $35 million to make, stars Michael Fassbender as a troubled detective in pursuit of a wintry serial killer. Universal said “The Snowman” has taken in an additional $19.2 million overseas.
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Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/22/movies/tyler-perrys-boo-2-madea-halloween-box-office.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
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