An Old Foe Finally Ends “Compton” Box Office Reign

By Kip Mooney • On • In News News 0

BOX OFFICE REPORT 

September 4-6, 2015(estimates from BoxOfficeMojo.com)

TOP 51. War Room ($9.3 million)2. Straight Outta Compton ($8.8 million)3. A Walk in the Woods ($8.4 million)4. Mission Impossible 5 ($7.1 million)5. The Transporter Refueled ($7.1 million)

Thanks to strong word-of-mouth and a stunning lack of competition, War Room prayed its way to the top spot on a slow Labor Day weekend. The faith-based film nearly won it all last weekend, but couldn't quite beat out Straight Outta Compton. Its success is both exciting and bewildering. Ordinarily, an independently financed film beating out Hollywood studio crap would be cause for celebration. But not for a movie so poorly acted and written. And it's also great to see a film with a predominantly black cast earn success, since any racial minority is always underserved by Hollywood, but they deserve a better movie than this. And a Christian film, a rarity, could always use a spotlight. But not on a movie without a shaky theological premise (essentially, everything you want can be yours if you just pray hard enough). But such is the hand we're dealt.

Straight Outta Compton fell to No. 2 and will cross $150 million after Monday. It's slightly higher than the geriatric hiking movie A Walk in the Woods, which opened Wednesday and made $8.4 million over the weekend. Again, another underserved audience (the AARP crowd) flocked to a movie that was tailored for them. You paying attention Hollywood? No? That's what I thought.

Audiences must really not want The Transporter without Jason Statham. Refueled, which rebooted the franchise, which last had a film in 2008, couldn't even beat out the sixth weekend of Mission: Impossible "“ Rogue Nation. EC will probably put the brakes on this series. As Entertainment Weekly pointed out, this is the first weekend in 2015 that no movie made more than $10 million. 

Outside the top 5: - This Weekend's Indie Champ: Grandma made it three in a row, adding another 33 screens while still averaging $9,443.

- Another underserved audience came out in big numbers this weekend: Spanish speakers. The animated comedy Un Gallo con Muchos Huevos made $3.4 million, despite debuting on less than 400 screens.

- Let's pour one out for the biggest flops of this summer: Fantastic Four, which only made $54 million (that's less than Vacation); Pixels, which only made $73 million (less than Ted 2) and  Terminator: Genisys, which only made $89 million, but is doing great business in China. 

Next week: The surprisingly crowded fall season begins. 90 Minutes in Heaven will try to replicate the success of War Room. The Perfect Guy is a creepy tale of romance gone wrong and The Visit is M. Night Shyamalan's latest comeback attempt. My prediction is The Visit, which should earn at the very least $15 million, and be the shot in the arm Shyamalan needs.

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About Kip Mooney

Kip Mooney
Like many film critics born during and after the 1980s, my hero is Roger Ebert. The man was already the best critic in the nation when he won the Pulitzer in 1975, but his indomitable spirit during and after his recent battle with cancer keeps me coming back to read not only his reviews but his insightful commentary on the everyday. But enough about a guy you know a lot about. I knew I was going to be a film critic—some would say a snob—in middle school, when I had to voraciously defend my position that The Royal Tenenbaums was only a million times better than Adam Sandler’s remake of Mr. Deeds. From then on, I would seek out Wes Anderson’s films and avoid Sandler’s like the plague. Still, I like to think of myself as a populist, and I’ll be just as likely to see the next superhero movie as the next Sundance sensation. The thing I most deplore in a movie is laziness. I’d much rather see movies with big ambitions try and fail than movies with no ambitions succeed at simply existing. I’m also a big advocate of fun-bad movies like The Room and most of Nicolas Cage’s work. In the past, I’ve written for The Dallas Morning News and the North Texas Daily, which I edited for a semester. I also contributed to Dallas-based Pegasus News, which in the circle of life, is now part of The Dallas Morning News, where I got my big break in 2007. Eventually, I’d love to write and talk about film full-time, but until that’s a viable career option, I work as an auditor for Wells Fargo. I hope to one day meet my hero, go to the Toronto International Film Festival, and compete on Jeopardy. Until then, I’m excited to share my love of film with you.

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