Box office: Expendables bombs, might lose to The Nun in the worst weekend of the year

Also: The Nun II has some of the best legs of the Conjuring franchise, while Branagh's latest Poirot film drops faster than the others.

Jason Statham and Sylvester Stallone returned to the Expendables franchise after a nine-year hiatus, and… didn’t find an audience waiting for them.

Another week, another virtual tie at the top of the box office, as ticket sales reached a new low for the year overall.

The Nun II, which narrowly held on to the top spot last week, seems to have held it again this week despite earning only $8.4 million according to studio estimates. (The film’s North American total now stands at $69.2 million after three weeks.)

Second place went to newcomer Expend4bles, aka The Expendables 4, which bombed with $8.3 million despite predictions that it would open to $15 million—which already would have been the lowest opening ever for the 13-year-old franchise.

Whichever film wins in the end, it will mark only the second time this year that the #1 film at the box office made less than $10 million (or even $14 million). The first film to earn that dubious distinction was Magic Mike’s Last Dance, which opened to $8.3 million in mid-February—and it’s possible that this week’s champ, such as it is, will do even worse business when the final figures are announced later today.

Compounding these problems is the fact that this appears to have been the worst week for ticket sales overall this year, with grosses for all films coming to a mere $51.7 million—less than the previous low of $52.6 million back in mid-February.

As ever, some people blame the lousy box-office stats on the actors’ strike, which has prevented movie stars from promoting their films for over two months now. This could be a special hindrance to ensemble films like the Expendables sequel.

Thankfully, it looks like the writers’ strike might be nearing its end, as the studios and the writers’ union came to a tentative agreement last night after nearly five months of picketing and a few days of negotiating. If the deal is ratified by the union as a whole, then the studios can move on to resolving their issues with the actors’ union.

In the meantime, I note that this was, at one point, going to be the week that The Book of Clarence came out—but that film got bumped to January a few months ago.

More thoughts and charts on this week’s top ten below.

But first, a few general points about the current state of ‘Barbenheimer’, the unlikely duo that conquered the box office exactly two months (and four days) ago:

Barbie held on to fifth place this week with an estimated $3.2 million, raising its total to $630.5 million, while its former chart-mate Oppenheimer is virtually tied with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem for tenth place, both films having earned about $1.6 million. Oppenheimer’s total now stands at $321.2 million, and if the turtles pull ahead, this would be the first week Oppenheimer falls out of the top ten.

Notably, ‘Barbenheimer’ continue to do very well when you compare each weekend of their release to the equivalent weekends of their fellow post-Covid films:

This chart does not depict the figures for Weekends 1 to 7.

A few extra points to note about that chart:

• Barbie, which was one of the five top films each week for its first nine weeks, now ranks sixth among post-Covid films in their tenth weeks.

• Barbie, which was once well ahead of Top Gun: Maverick and Avatar: The Way of Water, is now well behind where those films were after ten weeks.

  • It is now about $19.9 million behind Top Gun: Maverick.

  • It is also about $27.1 million behind Avatar: The Way of Water.

• Oppenheimer previously had the 17th-best first weekend of the post-Covid era, and its second to ninth weekends ranked between seventh-best and 13th-best. Now it has the 12th-best tenth weekend of the post-Covid era.

And now, a few more stats re: this week’s top ten (and beyond), title by title: