A soft week adds to an already flaccid summer box office

This has been a depressed summer for movies as far as box office returns. To exacerbate the drop in returns for the summer frame this was a week of dismal totals overall. The absence of a major blockbuster is made more stark when you consider the entire top-10 would end up struggling to reach the $80 level in total.

A couple of new releases attempted to make an impact, delivering more of a ripple. A wide array of big name actors were rolled out, leading to a mostly tepid response. This follows the pattern of the past month when only select few titles managed to make an impact as top line and second-tier performers failed to draw an audience in an appreciable fashion. Let’s dig into diminished figures to determine how they didn’t draw distinctly.

1. THE HITMAN’S BODYGUARD – $21.6million

Heavily promoted for the past month this is at best considered a mixed result. The $30 million budget was basically doubled in promotional expense. However before the weekend it was expected to only draw in the mid teens, so this was better than anticipated. The reviews have been less than glowing, so the long term prospects peg this at near break-even.

2.  ANNABELLE: CREATION – $15.5m

A deep drop of 55% is about expected with horror titles, but this is a decent enough hold off of a strong opening. As the title has now rolled out internationally and earned over $160 million, the lower budget Warner Brothers and New Line partnered “Conjuring” franchise has earned over $1billion in total.

3.  LOGAN LUCKY – $7.7m

This marks the return of director Steven Soderbergh from a self-imposed retirement. He drew together an impressive cast of stars and collected a $30million budget through a creative sell-off of rights to foreign distributors, and a streaming service deal with Amazon. Soderbergh attempted a curious distribution deal with Bleeker Street. Despite the director’s clout, and the impressive cast, this fell well short of the double-digit returns needed to help this become a success.

4.  DUNKIRK – $6.7m

The unqualified success here has been only a moderate surprise. A huge return in foreign territories has pushed this one to become Christopher Nolan’s fifth most successful release. Later this week it will cross over the $400million mark.

5.  THE NUTJOB 2: NUTTY BY NATURE – $5.11m

The second week hold is decent, at -38%, however this means little. Last week this set the record for futility, with the worst opening of any movie in 4,000 theaters. So far it has only drawn less than half of its production budget, not to mention the advertising and distribution costs. This will be a heavy loss for Open Road Films.

6.  THE EMOJI MOVIE – $4.35m

The soft schedule competition means this despised offering is still lingering after a month.

7.  SPIDER-MAN: HOMECOMING – $4.25m

This is still delivering strong enough that the per-screen average would still have it set in the top-5.

8. GIRLS TRIP – $3.84m

The rare successful comedy this year has been churning out decent weekly returns. The $20million budget has earned over $100million for Universal.

9. THE DARK TOWER – $3.72m

This forgotten Stephen King adaptation is already dropping theaters in week #3, and plummeting quickly with another drop of over 50%.

10.  WIND RIVER – $3.02m

The Jeremy Renner police procedural set in an Indian reservation in the upper north expanded into just under 700 theaters. The strong screen average would place this in the top-5, so The Weinstein Company may try to expand things based on this return.