Weekend Report: Turtles, Guardians Crush Weak Expendables
by Ray Subers
August 17, 2014


Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Guardians of the Galaxy held on to the top two spots at the box office this weekend, handily defeating the disappointing Expendables 3.

The Top 12 earned an estimated $128.8 million this weekend, which is up six percent from the same frame last year. This August remains on track to be the biggest ever at the domestic box office with around $1 billion.







Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fell 57 percent to an estimated $28.4 million. The movie avoided the 60-percent-plus drop of many of Summer 2014's blockbusters, which is a solid win considering the poor reviews and mixed word-of-mouth.

Turtles has so far earned $117.6 million, and will pass G.I. Joe: Retaliation ($122.5 million) in the next few days.







In its third weekend, Guardians of the Galaxy eased 41 percent to $24.7 million. On Saturday, it eclipsed Thor: The Dark World's domestic total.

With $222.3 million in the bank already, Guardians is going to have no problem surpassing Captain America: The Winter Soldier ($260 million). In fact, it's now a safe bet that Guardians of the Galaxy ends its domestic box office run with over $280 million.







In a surprising development, The Expendables 3 wasn't the highest-grossing newcomer of the weekend. That honor went to Let's Be Cops, which took third place with $17.7 million. Including its Wednesday and Thursday grosses, Let's Be Cops has already earned $26.1 million.

That five-day total is nowhere near We're the Millers and Tropic Thunder, which respectively opened to $37.9 million and $36.8 million. Still, this debut is a major step up from August comedies like The Change-Up and 30 Minutes or Less (both between $13 and $14 million).



It's also worth noting that Let's Be Cops opened above recent star-driven comedies like A Million Ways to Die in the West, Sex Tape and Blended. Credit goes to Fox's marketing department for a campaign that clearly conveyed the movie's interesting premise while also supplying plenty of laughs.

The movie's audience was 56 percent male and 54 percent under the age of 25. With a younger audience, poor reviews and mixed word-of-mouth ("B" CinemaScore), this will likely fall off quickly. Still, a total north of $55 million is likely.







The Expendables 3 opened in fourth place with an estimated $16.2 million, which is off a massive 43 percent from The Expendables 2's debut.

That's a stunning drop, and is almost unheard of for closely-timed sequels (though fellow Lionsgate/Summit release Step Up All In was off 45 percent from its predecessor last weekend).



A handful of factors contributed to this steep drop. As is the case with many third installments, franchise fatigue has set in; while the movie did seem to mix things up a bit, it still couldn't overcome the feeling that it was more of the same.

Meanwhile, some die-hard fans of the first two installments were likely turned off by the movie's PG-13 rating; for a franchise that was built around over-the-top violence, this seemed like an odd change.

Finally, it's likely that piracy had some kind of impact. A pristine version of the movie has been online for the past few weeks, and has reportedly been downloaded over two million times. It's impossible to say exactly how much of an impact this had, but it's also hard to imagine that the movie would have dropped 43 percent without the piracy effect.



The Expendables 3's audience was 61 percent male and 66 percent over the age of 25 (so much for that PG-13 rating). It received an "A-" CinemaScore, which suggests decent word-of-mouth. If it follows the trajectory of the first two movies, it will close around $48 million.







Playing at 3,003 theaters, The Giver opened in fifth place with an estimated $12.8 million.

While it came in on the high end of these comparisons, The Giver still essentially wound up in the same realm as recent young-adult flops The Host, The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones and Beautiful Creatures.

In the long run, The Giver should close between $30 and $40 million.







Into The Storm fell 56 percent to $7.7 million.

Meanwhile, The Hundred-Foot Journey added $7.1 million, which was off a light 35 percent.







Richard Linklater's Boyhood expanded to 771 theaters and cracked the Top 10 with $2.15 million.

To date, Boyhood has earned $13.8 million, and it's on track to close with at least $20 million total.







Woody Allen's Magic in the Moonlight expanded nationwide to 964 theaters and earned a weak $1.9 million. That's noticeably lower than To Rome with Love, which grossed $3.11 million in its wide expansion.

With mixed word-of-mouth and reviews, Magic in the Moonlight may struggle to reach $10 million.







After a week in limited release, What If expanded to 787 theatres this weekend.

The Daniel Radcliffe/Zoe Kazan rom-com earned $829,000, which is the third-lowest nationwide debut this year ahead of The Rover ($481,214) and The Railway Man ($551,943).

In the long run, this should earn more than Kazan's Ruby Sparks ($2.54 million), but not by much.

http://www.boxofficemojo.com/news/?id=3893&p=.htm









August 15-17, 2014 Weekend Studio Estimates:


1. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles $28,400,000 / $117,642,000
2. Guardians of the Galaxy $24,735,000 / $222,281,000
3. Let's Be Cops $26,107,000
4. The Expendables 3 $16,200,000
5. The Giver $12,760,000
6. Into The Storm $7,720,000 / $31,341,000
7. The Hundred-Foot Journey $7,109,000 / $23,619,000
8. Lucy $5,317,000 / $107,537,000
9. Step Up All In $2,700,000 / $11,849,000
10. Boyhood $2,150,000 / $13,801,000

I guess i can't say i'm surprised that The Expendables 3 didn't make a lot of money because action movies haven't made a lot of money in a long time. Sylvester Stallone probably doesn't care that it didn't make a lot of money because he's probably gonna continue to make sequels to this hahahahahahahahahahahahaha. I want this to be the last one but i know it won't be. When i saw this last week, there wasn't a lot of people in there but it's always like that when i see action movies. Like i said, action movies aren't making a lot of money anymore like they did in the 80's and 90's.

http://znculturecast.wordpress.com/2014/08/24/what-went-wrong-vol-51-macho-sequel-edition/

In 2010, The Expendables, a team-up of all-star 80s, 90s, and 2000s action heroes debuted at number one in the box office and ultimately grossed over 100 million dollars in the domestic box office alone. The sequel took a domestic dip, but ended up over 300 million in grosses worldwide (the sequel was also a far superior film that was a lot more fun). The recently released Expendables 3, however, tanked upon it’s domestic debut. After two weekends in theaters, the film hasn’t even earned what the second film did in its first weekend at the box office. The three-quel will ultimately earn less than half of either film in grosses and will rely heavily on overseas dollars to become profitable. I can’t imagine a theatrically released Expendables 4 will happen any time soon. So, what exactly went wrong?

Piracy is at least partially to blame. When I saw a news item about how a DVD-quality leak of Expendables 3 became widely available on the Internet weeks before the film’s theatrical release, I knew the project was doomed to box office mediocrity (it was downloaded over two million times in just a few short weeks). But other factors played into the film’s failure as well. Expendables 3 was already a sequel to a sequel to a film designed to capture a wave of fleeting 80s nostalgia. The ploy worked well once and fairly well a second time, but it was never going to last. Ultimately, you just can’t expect success doing the same thing over and over again – something needs to be fresh about the experience.

Arguably, the casting of Ronda Rousey as well as the other, younger Expendables team (including Kellen Lutz, who I like but who has not done a great job picking roles thus far outside of lucking into the Twilight franchise) was designed to bring in a younger audience. Additionally, the PG-13 nature of the film meant that younger teenagers could see the movie without needing a parent to buy them a ticket (it is the first PG-13 rated film in the franchise). Unfortunately, Expendables 3 happened to open one week after the successful Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film reboot and just two weeks after the mega-successful Guardians of the Galaxy. Ronda Rousey or not, the project just wasn’t going to go toe-to-toe with those two films.

The high quality leaked torrent of the film coupled with an unfortunate PG-13 rating coupled with audience disinterest coupled with intense competition at the box office just killed Expendables 3 and it’s chances of a healthy domestic gross. The film will likely make up ground overseas, but I don’t think there’s much of a chance we’ll see an Expendables 4 any time soon – unless Sylvester Stallone and company can keep the budget to a more manageable 50 million or so. There just won’t be much money to be made in the film franchise unless that happens. Additionally, Stallone will have to really strive to freshen up the concept, because the experience is greatly in danger of growing stale.

Whoever put a wrong rating on Expendables 3 was their fault!