'Ghostbusters: Afterlife' is a movie.
Sony.
Ghostbusters: Afterlife easily topped the domestic box office on Friday night. The Columbia/Sony/Bron release, starring Mckenna Grace as the late Egon Spengler's granddaughter in a small-tong of age "legacy sequel" to the original Ghostbusters, earned a solid $16.5 million on Friday, including $4.5 million in Thursday previews. If it rallies the kids like Free Guy, the film could open between $39 million and $45 million. That is an excellent opening for a movie with an A- from Cinemascore, which should go on to do well until Sony releases Spider-Man: No Way Home in mid-December. Between Venom 2, Ghostbusters 3 and Spider-Man 3 version 2.0, Sony is doing as much to keep theatrical alive as Disney.
The previous Ghostbusters movie opened with $46 million in July of 2016 It was seen as a wait and see scenario. Answer the Call cost more than Afterlife. The cost of the last Ghostbusters movie was the main mistake of the movie, it was based on an overestimation of the general audience interest in another Ghostbusters movie as well as a presumption that 15 years of overseas expansion and a 3-D boost would lead to more Ghostbusters movies. Answer the Call was just as cynical as Sony's remakes ofRobocop and Total Recall.
Domestic audiences showed up to the tune of $126 million, which was the biggest straight-up comedy of the year. $229 million worldwide was a disaster on a $144 million budget, and overseas audiences didn't care. It was seen as a big win for the crowd, when in reality it was just another case of a previously-special franchise stumbling amid a summer filled with "once-" The lesson of overestimating overseas interest in nostalgia American intellectual property was not learned in time, but it was a lesson that was overestimating overseas interest in nostalgia American intellectual property.
Ghostbusters: Afterlife can open below Answer the Call and still be a rock-solid success because of this. Answer the Call is a coming-of-age fantasy even for people with no interest in movies, and it is sold by fan service and cynical marketing. The budget suggests the same discipline that brought Venom: Let There Be Carnage in under $115 million and the first X-men allowed the trend to continue.
Answer the Call received better reviews in 2016 than it did in 2015, and we should remember that. When you only spend $75 million, you don't have to break records or be hailed as a critical masterpiece to break even, and this unapologetic/shameless "legacy sequel" didn't make the mistake of spending Return of the King money on Fellowship of the Ring. That is one of the grim ironies of the theatrical environment. Ghostbusters: Afterlife, Space Jam: A New Legacy, and Snake Eyes: G.I. Joe Origins are some of the most cynical franchise exploitations that have been turned into genuine underdogs because of the challenges of getting people to see them.
'King Richard'
Anne Marie Fox was given by Warner Bros.
The weekend was bombed by the actual underdog. The movie King Richard, starring Will Smith as the father of Venus and Serena Williams, opened in theaters and on HBO Max this weekend. The sports biopic/ family melodrama, which Smith is seen as a contender to win a Best Actor Oscar for, earned just $1.92 million domestically for a likely $5.90 million opening weekend. Warner Bros.' non-event films have been par for the course since late 2019. King Richard will open in line with the likes of Focus and Concussion, but below them, as it received an A from Cinemascore.
The raw number stinks, but I am hopeful it will leg out. You should remember this next time you read a post that says Smith needs a new agent because he signed on for Aladdin 2, Independence Day 3, Men in Black 5, Bad Boys 4Ever or Deadshot The Movie. Smith has been making non-franchise films for the last decade, but the new normal which sees audiences barely seeing anything outside of the nostalgia franchise comfort zone has proved their undoing. Smith pushed a true-life drama about economic mobility to $300 million worldwide. The marketplace is more important than the movie star, that he couldn't open King Richard to $10 million is clear.
