In the world of football, it doesn’t matter how pretty your wins are. Whether you beat a team by two points or 20, it counts just the same.
But when it comes to the box office? Not so much.
Take the case of Disney’s Tron: Ares, the third installment in the 43-year-old Tron franchise. If you take a quick look at the box office, you’ll see that Ares won the weekend handily, clearing an estimated $33.5 million in North America and more than quadrupling the earnings of its nearest competitor.
But given that Disney spent an estimated $180 million to make Ares (not including marketing costs), and considering prognosticators expected Ares to make more than $40 million in its domestic debut, that $33.5 mil doesn’t look quite so rosy.
It’s possible that Tron: Ares could still turn its digital ship around. It earned another $27 million overseas, bringing its global total to an estimated $60.5 million. And its forbear, Tron: Legacy, started a little slow itself—and it went on to earn nearly $410 million.
Another newcomer, Roofman, finished just below the box office’s own ceiling. The Channing Tatum film scraped up $8 million domestically in its first weekend, which feels just about enough to open its own Toys ‘R’ Us store.
One Battle After Another continued to hold strong, earning just under $6.7 million in its third full weekend of release. The Oscar hopeful has now earned $54.5 million stateside and about $138 million worldwide.
Gabby’s Dollhouse: The Movie finished the weekend in fourth place, earning nearly $3.4 million en route. Since it opened Sept. 26, Gabby’s Dollhouse has lapped up about $26.4 million in North America, and nearly $46 million worldwide. That’s not exactly a purrrfect take, but it’s not too shabby, either.
In fifth place we find Soul on Fire, an inspirational, Christian-esque biopic inspired by John O’Leary. It earned $3 million in its opening weekend—a nice beginning for what I thought was a very nice movie.
3 Responses
The reviews for “Tron: Ares” have been disappointing; a lot of eye candy isn’t quite enough to carry a film for me. “Roofman” doesn’t look like my cup of tea, no matter how charming Channing Tatum may be. I’ll probably see “One Battle After Another” tomorrow before it starts disappearing from theaters. I must say that I REALLY liked the PG-13 rated “Good Boy,” which relied more on atmosphere and sheer dread than on violence, gore, and explicit language; it was one of spookiest times I’ve had in a theater, and the cute dog, Indy, put in such a great performance just being a DOG.
Something I wish was touched on more was the controversies surrounding Jared Leto that for many prospective audiences, including myself, make anything he’s in an instant skip for me. Especially knowing that Leto was a producer on Ares, despite Tron being one of my favourite franchises, I just can’t in good faith hand over money to see a movie with him when he has so many troubling allegations of impropriety and sexual misconduct with minors- these allegations are not new and have been around for years, to the extent that even industry heavyweights like James Gunn have publicly called it out and asked how Leto still gets these roles.
Even with the writing and plot issues in Ares, had Leto not been involved, I and many others would still have gladly paid to see it in theatres. Whether publications want to acknowledge it or not, it’s Leto tanking these movies by involvement alone.
This blog was… how do you say it? Relevant!! Finally I’ve found something that helped me.
Thanks!