As summer winds down, the last weekend in July brings another three new wide releases top-lined by Matt Damon’s Jason Bourne for Universal which has a virtual lock on the top spot at the box office for the weekend barring disaster. The Bourne franchise has been one of Universal’s biggest bright spots and with Damon and Greengrass finally agreeing to make another after a 10 year hiatus the series will get a much needed shot in the arm after its last Jeremy Renner-led entry was solid though unspectacular. STX Entertainment will offer up its mom-comedy Bad Moms hoping to strike gold with female movie patrons while Lionsgate will debut Nerve on Wednesday hoping to get a head start on the weekend and generate positive word of mouth to provide a leggy run at the box office.
Jason Bourne
PROS:
– The Jason Bourne franchise has grossed over $1 billion worldwide, with the last Matt Damon/Paul Greengrass entry in 2007, The Bourne Ultimatum, opening to almost $70 million and making $227 million domestically.
– Bourne‘s brand of espionage mixed with very gritty action was a model the James Bond franchise followed in recent years to huge success.
– The Bourne Legacy spin-off starring Jeremy Renner managed to open just shy of $40 million in 2012 despite not actually featuring the ever-popular Jason Bourne as a character.
– The franchise has a history of doing well with older movie-goers, with a male skew. This demographic is under-represented by social media which leads to lower numbers than normal. When compared with The Bourne Legacy it has more than double the tweets about its corresponding trailers.
– Matt Damon is coming off an Oscar nomination and the highest grossing worldwide film of his career in The Martian and has become one of the most bankable Hollywood action stars. This is ironic since one of the knocks against his casting as Jason Bourne back in 2002 was that he had never been the lead in an action movie.
CONS:
– It has been a summer filled with sequels which the general audience appears to be growing tired of, this backlash could negatively affect its potential.
– It’s been a long time since the last Damon/Greengrass film (2007) and perhaps the momentum they built in the original trilogy will be difficult to tap into again.
– Early reviews are mixed at best, with it having far far the worst reviews of the four Greengrass/Damon Bourne films.
Bad Moms
PROS:
– Social media buzz has been strong for its trailers, especially its red band trailer.
– Female skewing R-rated comedies have a strong track record of performing well in Summer, with last year’s Trainwreck, 2010’s Bad Teacher, 2011’s Bridesmaids, 2012’s Magic Mike, 2013’s The Heat and 2014’s Tammy all being big hits. Bad Moms is a strong contender to carry on the torch.
– The film has an impressive female cast of all ages which should help to appeal to a wide cross-section of women. Mila Kunis is also no stranger to the genre, having starred in three successful R-rated comedies over the years with Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Friends With Benefits and Ted.
CONS:
– STX Entertainment is a relatively new distributor who currently has a best opening of just $11.9 million (The Boy). This will be the first comedy it is distributing and its inexperience could potentially limit its opening potential.
Nerve
PROS:
– Directed by the same team that worked on Catfish which was a moderate success at the box office and an even bigger hit with critics (80 percent fresh at Rotten Tomatoes).
– The film’s clever plot uses social media (more specifically an online game) as a main driving point for the plot which is something which could play well to teens and twenty-somethings, not unlike Unfriended.
— Its Tuesday night number was very strong ($1.1 million) which blew away early expectations.
CONS:
– Social media numbers have been hard to come by for the film, especially Facebook where it is currently sitting at under 150,000 likes. Twitter is tough to accurately measure thanks to its generic name, but even with that in mind its awareness has been low. For a film which is trying to appeal to a very strong and savvy social media demographic this isn’t a good sign. Unfriended had over 1,000,000 likes on Facebook on the eve of its release.
– Though both recognisable faces thanks to various ensemble movies (not to mention their more famous family members), Emma Roberts and Dave Franco have not proven to be viable box office draws in their own right yet.
– Bad Moms could steal some of its target demographic, making it hard for it to attract a sizeable audience.
Top 10 Forecast
Box Office Pro forecasts this weekend’s top ten films will generate $170.6 million. That would mark a 22% increase from last year’s $136.2 million when Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation led the domestic box office with just over $55 million in receipts.
Check out our complete weekend forecast below.
| Title | Distributor | Weekend | Domestic Total through Sunday, July 31 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jason Bourne | Universal | $51,000,000 | $51,000,000 |
| Star Trek Beyond | Paramount | $29,000,000 | $112,000,000 |
| Bad Moms | STX Entertainment | $27,000,000 | $27,000,000 |
| The Secret Life of Pets | Universal | $16,300,000 | $294,200,000 |
| Ice Age: Collision Course | Fox | $11,750,000 | $44,000,000 |
| Lights Out | Warner Bros. (New Line) | $10,850,000 | $43,000,000 |
| Ghostbusters (2016) | Sony / Columbia | $9,500,000 | $106,100,000 |
| Nerve | Lionsgate | $8,500,000 | $12,500,000 |
| Finding Dory | Buena Vista | $4,350,000 | $469,100,000 |
| The Legend of Tarzan | Warner Bros. | $3,750,000 | $123,400,000 |
Share this post