“Alien: Covenant” Makes a Pact with Audiences

Despite mixed reviews, Alien: Covenant latched onto audiences. The sixth film in the franchise opened with an estimated $36 million. That was good enough for first place, but well below the $51 million Prometheus debuted with back in 2012. While that may seem to put a damper on a sequel – director Ridley Scott has promised anywhere from one to five more films – worldwide grosses will probably save it.

The latest film in the nearly 40-year-old franchise just barely topped the third weekend of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. The Marvel sequel made $33 million, just topping $300 million, making it only the second film of 2017 to do so. It should top the original's $333 million before it's all said and done, making it the fifth-biggest Marvel Cinematic Universe movie.

YA adaptation Everything, Everything did respectably as counter-programming. The romance about an immunodeficient girl and the boy who wants to show her the world outside her quarantine took in about $12 million, more than its modest $10 million budget. That's better than you can say for Snatched, which took a 61 percent hit in its second weekend. The film has yet to top its $42 million budget. That's a huge drop-off from 2015's Trainwreck, which earned more than $100 million. Finally, the fourth (yes, fourth) entry in the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series – and first in five years – opened at about half of the last film (2012's Dog Days), which probably mean this series is grounded.

Outside the top 5:

• This Weekend's Indie Champ: Wakefield, the E.L. Doctorow adaptation starring Bryan Cranston. The drama about a man abandoning his family, but still observing them daily, earned $14,120 on its lone screen.
• Audiences aren't taking to Risk or 3 Generations at all. Both films dropped more than 70 percent in their third weekends. The former – a documentary on Julian Assange from Academy Award winner Laura Poitras – has yet to top $200,000, while the latter hasn't even made $70,000 yet, despite the star power of Elle Fanning, Naomi Watts and Susan Sarandon.
• Champion isn't living up to its name. The faith-based drama about auto racing made just $87,100 on 31 screens.

Next weekend:

In the summer's first four-day weekend, Baywatch gets a one-day head start on Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, the fifth movie in the series. It's hard to tell just how much American audiences want another Pirates movie. The last one (On Stranger Tides) debuted six years ago and did worse than the three original films. Yet it also made more than $1 billion worldwide. So I'll hedge my bets a bit and say it will still be No. 1, but with only $45 million. Meanwhile, the R-rated Baywatch will debut with a respectable $30 million.