Weekend Predictions: Will New Releases Make a Splash, or are They Dead in the Water?

May 25, 2017

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales

It’s Memorial Day long weekend, which is historically one of the best long weekends at the box office all year. However, this year the two new releases are far from the best. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales has the worst reviews in the franchise and its domestic box office will likely be the same. Sadly, Baywatch’s reviews are even worse. That said, they should still finish one-two over the weekend, while Alien: Covenant and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 will be in a race for third place. It likely won’t be close. Meanwhile, this weekend last year, X-Men: Apocalypse and Alice Through the Looking Glass opened one-two during the weekend with results that are similar to what Dead Men Tell No Tales / Baywatch are expected to make. I don’t know if 2017 will win in the year-over-year comparison, but it should be close.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales is the fifth film in the franchise and hopefully the last. Only the first film earned good reviews and the critical response has steadily dropped since then. This time around, the movie is only earning 28% positive reviews. Furthermore, the buzz is on the weak side when compared to the previous installments. It will have the worst opening since the first movie. It might not even live up to X-Men: Apocalypse last year. I’m not that pessimistic, but I’m going with a $67 million / $82 million debut.

Baywatch, the TV show, only existed because back in 1989 the internet wasn’t common. With the rise of the internet, there’s no reason to have a TV show whose only purpose is to show off women in bathing suits. Because of this, you can’t make a straight adaptation of the show, but you have to do something else. With Baywatch, the moviemakers decided to mimic 21 Jump Street and make it a buddy cop comedy. I know technically Dwayne Johnson and Zac Efron are not playing cops, but they function that way in the plot. Sadly, this doesn’t work. The reviews are just 19% positive. It is opening tonight to get a jump on the weekend competition and it should earn first place with $7 million or so, but it will struggle to maintain that start earning $35 million during the five-day weekend.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 will get pushed to third place with $22 million over the four-day weekend. This will be more than enough to push it past the original film and into fifth place in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Alien: Covenant will fall to fourth place with just under $20 million during the four-day weekend. It isn’t living up to Prometheus, which means it will have a tough time breaking even on its own. Perhaps there has been a large enough boost to the earlier installments in the franchise to keep it going, but that’s a bit of a wildcard.

Everything, Everything should round out the top five with $9 million over four days, lifting its total to about $25 million. This is a good run for a film that cost $10 million to make, enough to break even sometime on the home market.

- Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales Comparisons
- Baywatch Comparisons

Filed under: Weekend Preview, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, Alien: Covenant, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2, Baywatch, Everything, Everything, Alien, Pirates of the Caribbean, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Zac Efron, Dwayne Johnson