Weekend Estimates: Will International Earnings Be Enough to Save Last Knight?
June 25, 2017
A tepid $45.3 million Friday-to-Sunday domestic weekend for Transformers: The Last Knight is pretty much unmitigated bad news for Paramount Pictures. The studio is in desperate need of a hit, and the Transformers franchise is by far their biggest property. Even including the film’s grosses from Wednesday and Thursday, its $69 million debut is barely in the top ten for the year so far, and poor reviews and a B+ CinemaScore mean that it won’t have significant legs, even with a bit of help from the upcoming July 4 weekend. So all eyes are going to be on its overseas performance.
Things are certainly looking much better internationally, with Paramount reporting $196.2 million so far, for a combined global opening of $265.3 million after five days. The big question is how that stacks up against previous outings for the franchise.
And the answer is… OK. Age of Extinction opened with $201.3 million internationally back in 2014, including just short of $100 million in China. Dark of the Moon did $155 million overseas on its opening weekend, and Revenge of the Fallen opened with $162 million over five days abroad. So Last Knight’s overseas performance is basically on par with the franchise’s other films. However, with international markets having grown substantially over the last decade, staying flat isn’t really good enough, particularly when domestic box office is falling sharply: from $402 million for Revenge of the Fallen, to $352 million for Dark of the Moon, to $245 million for Age of Extinction, and now, perhaps $150 million for The Last Knight.
Even with $600 million internationally this time around, a $750 million global gross translates into about $350 million for the studio, which will have spent at least that to produce and market the film. Paramount has some tough thinking to do over the next few weeks about whether to continue with the franchise. Given it and Star Trek are their only reliable bankers these days, they might not have a choice.
There are a couple of brighter sparks on this week’s chart. Wonder Woman will be down 39% in its fourth weekend to $25.1 million, for $318.3 million to date, and is just days away from becoming the highest-grossing film domestically in the DC Universe. 47 Meters Down will decline only 34% in its second weekend, for $7.4 million and $24.3 million so far. Byron Allen, Entertainment Studios Motion Pictures’ CEO reports, “Our second weekend is stronger than expected, which shows the movie has fins.” Indeed.
In limited release, two films are producing the best numbers of 2017 so far. The Big Sick will earn about $435,000 from five screens, for an average of $87,000 per location. The Beguiled is headed for $240,545, per Focus Features’ Sunday morning estimate, for an average of $60,000 from four theaters. Both films should expand significantly over the next few weeks (Beguiled is already slated for over 500 theaters next weekend), and will offer some welcome counter-programming to the frenetic action offered by most of the other films in release right now.
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Filed under: Weekend Estimates, Wonder Woman, Transformers: The Last Knight, 47 Meters Down, The Beguiled, The Big Sick, Star Trek, Pirates of the Caribbean, Transformers, Marvel Cinematic Universe, DC Extended Universe