Images courtesy Walt Disney Motion Picture Studios. All of them.
When I started doing these Labor Day summer wrapups five years ago, what I identified — and what plenty of other people identified — was a crashing bubble at the domestic box office, and after a rebound year in 2018, it looks like that crash has finally happened.
Lionsgate’s Angel has Fallen rose high above industry expectations with an opening of $21.4 million, nearly matching its 2016 predecessor London has Fallen. It’s the series’ worst opening, but the first entry to spend time at no. 1. Other new release Overcomer also did better than expected, grabbing the no. 3 slot with $8.2 million, and Ready or Not did quite well with $8 million for a no. 6 finish. The no. 2, 4 and 5 slots were occupied by holdovers Good Boys, The Lion King and Hobbs & Shaw- Box Office Mojo
Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood hit the $200 million mark internationally this weekend, making it just the second original film to hit that mark in 2019 alongside Jordan Peele’s Us- The Hollywood Reporter
Keeping most of Angel has Fallen in the eastern backwoods both gives it a nice grimy tinge and mildly suppresses production costs. Images courtesy Lionsgate.
3/10 I really don’t want to think about Gerard Butler as a weirdo-James Woods type who makes movies to deliberately overcorrect for “liberal Hollywood” because he’s so talented, but it’s getting kind of ridiculous. The guy’s from Glasgow, but he’s spent the past decade self-producing these hyper-patriotic Die Hard knockoffs where he personally defends the president that all feel designed more for to deliver a political message and let Butler play out his ‘80s action hero fantasies than to entertain.
They’ve all got moments where a high-ranking official recites something mundane like the pledge of allegiance or the oath of office as a defiant statement against foreign forces, and his character is always thinking about retiring but learns that protecting the political hierarchy is the most important thing in the world, and there’s always more. They’re all full of awkward moments as they go out of their way to incorporate political ideology. Olympus has Fallen is basically all about gun control, and London has Fallen is much less gracefully about nationalism and paranoia, to the point that it drew attention for being kind of racist.
Universal’s Good Boys outperformed expectations, coming away with the weekend crown with $21.4 million. Of the four other new releases, only The Angry Birds Movie 2 with $10.4 million for a no. 4 place finish drew more than $10 million. Holdovers Hobbs & Shaw and The Lion King kept the nos. 2 and 3 slots with $14.2 million and $12.3 million, respectively- Box Office Mojo
Good Boys is only the third original movie to release at no. 1 in 2019, and the first comedy, a genre studios were reportedly beginning to give up on after numerous hyped releases opened much further down the charts- The New York Times
