Maybe there is a god, because it looked like Pixels was a massive flop at the North American box office over the weekend. Opening in second place with an estimated $24 million haul, Marvel’s Ant-Man narrowly beat Pixels to the top spot this weekend with $24.7 million taken.
Opening on 3723 screens, the Adam Sandler flick failed to capitlise on the retro charm of the video game properties that it had licensed, due to the flick having zero charm in even the most basic of acting departments.
Ant-Man clearly benefited from this, as well as having an extra hundred screens showing the film, as poor word of mouth kept audiences away from Pixels. Here’s how everyone else did on the weekend:
- Ant-Man – $24.7 Million
- Pixels – $24 Million
- Minions – $22.1 Million
- Trainwreck – $17.3 Million
- Southpaw – $16.5 Million
- Paper Towns – $12.5 Million
- Inside Out – $7.3 Million
- Jurassic World – $6.9 Million
- Mr Holmes – $2.8 Million
- Terminator Genisys – $2.4 Million
Top ten departures this week include Magic Mike XXL and The Gallows. Take off your stripper pants and dance, because the Magic Mike sequel cleaned up around the world with over $94 million so far. While it’s far off the mark of the first film’s 2012 total of $167.2 million, it’s not bad for a movie that only cost $14 million to make.
Last Updated: July 27, 2015
konfab
July 27, 2015 at 14:14
Has anyone else noticed that pacman’s eyes are pacmen? 0__o
The Sten
July 27, 2015 at 14:28
Somebody help me unsee this pls
Rock789
July 27, 2015 at 14:29
Wait, so Ant Man was in 100 more cinemas and yet barely beat out Pixels (not to mention it’s less than half it’s opening weekend takings)? That can’t be good, can it?
Kervyn Cloete
July 27, 2015 at 20:10
It’s the second week for Ant-Man. It had an expected drop off. It’s already made about $230 million (off a $160 million) and it must still open in half the regions this week.
Rock789
July 28, 2015 at 07:29
Agreed. Don’t get me wrong – it’ll make a tidy profit. But I don’t see this performing anywhere near the “normal” levels Marvel are now used to (or even getting close to GotG, it’s other recent ‘new franchise’ debut). And the last time that happened, they went a different direction with the character / franchise (think Incredible Hulk – a movie I quite liked, by the way). But hey, time will tell.
Kervyn Cloete
July 28, 2015 at 08:51
I don’t think Marvel was expecting Ant-Man to be a big earner. If I recall correctly, initial estimates was just off by a few million on what it actually ended up making.
They had the same lower estimates for Guardians – another hard sell to general audiences – but that just ended up surprising everybody. But while those type of unexpected huge box office successes are certainly nice, Marvel’s game plan seems to look beyond just that (well, as long as the movies are at least profitable).
Ant-Man is already in Captain America: Civil War and will have a major role in Avengers: Infinity War – Part 1 & 2, so not making crazy amounts of money is not going to hurt the character in the long run.
In fact, that’s actually not quite what happened with Incredible Hulk. Edward Norton was a control freak on that movie who wanted to edit it himself, and gave Marvel grief about everything which is why they changed actors to Mark Ruffalo. And then after that they never pursued a Hulk solo film because of Joss Whedon, as he specifically wanted to use Hulk for the Avengers movies in an exclusive capacity.