When is a number one opening at the box office a disappointment? Look no further than “Alien: Covenant.”
On the plus side, Ridley Scott‘s followup to “Prometheus” and latest entry in a planned series of films that will one day connect to the classic “Alien” cost less than its predecessor. However, the marketing was arguably more expensive, and the stakes are higher: the filmmaker needed this to be a big hit, especially if he wants to continue expanding the “Alien” mythology. Whether he’ll get to do that or not will largely depend on how Fox feels about the $36 million launch of “Alien: Covenant,” which just barely edged out “Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 2” to win the weekend. The figure is $15 million less than what “Prometheus” pulled in its opening frame, and while that film wound up doing 68% of its box office overseas, it’s looking unlikely that ‘Covenant’ will manage similar numbers, or even match $126 million domestic that previous film earned. Fox has been pretty willing to play ball with Scott’s franchise plans for “Alien,” but one wonders if they’ll continue to finance a series of films that it seems less and less people actually want to see.
READ MORE: The 25 Best Scenes In The ‘Alien’ Franchise
Warner Bros. were likely going to be happy with taking whatever they could get with the YA effort “Everything, Everything,” and the $12 million debut was perfectly fine. The modestly sized picture featured no major stars and little buzz, and was pretty much only going to play to the audience that read the book, and that looks like how it’s going to wind up. No more, no less.
While you weren’t paying attention, “Diary Of A Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul” became the fourth entry in the franchise you didn’t even know existed. I’m not sure who was going to the previous three films, but it’s probably safe to say the run is nearing an end, as this effort only managed to tally $7.2 million. It’s the lowest debut of any movie in the series by some measure (the previous film ‘Dog Days‘ kicked off with $14.6 million), and perhaps the audience for this series has now grown out of it.
The arthouse was fairly quiet, with no big releases; the Bryan Cranston-starring “Wakefield” and the Steve James doc “Abacus: Small Enough To Jail” each hit one screen, with decent-enough numbers.
1. “Alien: Covenant” — $36 million
2. “Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 2”— $35 million ($301.7 mil.)
3. “Everything, Everything” — $12 million
4. “Snatched” — $7.6 million ($32.7 mil.)
5. “Diary Of A Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul” — $7.2 million
6. “King Arthur: Legend Of The Sword” — $6.8 million ($27.2 mil.)
7. “The Fate Of The Furious” — $3.1 million ($219.8 mil.)
8. “The Boss Baby” — $2.8 million ($166.1 mil.)
9. “Beauty And The Beast” — $2.4 million ($497.7 mil.)
10. “How To Be A Latin Lover” — $2.2 million ($29.4 mil.)
But actually, Guardians beat Alien on Friday through Sunday….Alien only gets the fictitious “top” spot because Alien’s Thursday box office being counted towards the “weekend”. I’d like to see the media people covering movies stop allowing studios to spin their opening weekend hype by counting Thursday box office as part of “opening weekend”. It’s the studios way of making it seem like movies are doing better than their predecessors for purposes of marketing hype.
Too bad, Covenant was a very strange and interesting picture.