“The New Mutants” stumbles to so-so 3.1 million friday

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By: Keaton Marcus

After months and months with no real box office to report, cinemas are finally beginning to re-open across the globe as the world still struggles with the Coronavirus pandemic. This weekend, Fox and Disney’s X-Men spin-off The New Mutants has topped the charts on Friday, followed by Unhinged and Bill & Ted Face the Music.

Yesterday, these Mutants sold 3.1 million dollars in estimated ticket sales, heading for a weekend on the lower end of expectations. The movie is the finale to Fox’s X-Men universe, and it landed with a thud with the critics, as it has a mere 29% “Rotten” on Rotten Tomatoes, along with a mediocre 52% audience score. A disappointing end to this inconsistent, yet groundbreaking cinematic universe, but despite a somewhat weak opening day, this isn’t awful in a pandemic marketplace.

Despite not quite reaching our expectations, the film is projected for an 8 million weekend, in between Disney’s 7-10M predictions. Only about 62% of the domestic marketplace is open, but many important states such as New York, California, New Jersey, North Carolina, Michigan, Maryland, New Mexico and bits of Arizona are still shuttered. The devastating Hurricane Laura is also closing locations in Arkansas, Texas and Louisiana.

We don’t have much to compare to considering the situation. The previous installment was last year’s Dark Phoenix, which closed the prequel series with a whimper, earning negative reviews and bombing commercially. It opened with just over 14 million on Friday from 3,721 locations, TNM debuted with 3.1 million from 2,412 theaters. To make it fair, let’s say the latter opened in the same amount of cinemas….If we do the math, we’d still see a quite poor 4.2 million dollar day. That’s all theoretical, of course, but it tells audiences that this franchise has run its course.

The film isn’t cheap either, costing 80 million, which although isn’t a whole lot of cash for a superhero movie, it’ll be more than enough to make this a box office bomb. Still, this is the biggest day we’ve seen at the box office since Onward plummeted in its second weekend.

Otherwise, Russell Crowe’s road-rage thriller Unhinged is still going strong in its third weekend of theatrical release, grossing 840k on Friday from 2,331 theaters domestically, heading for a three-day of about 2M, down about 50% from last week’s expansion weekend of over 4 million. Behind runner-up, two other wide releases hit cinemas, with Bill & Ted Face the Music pulling in 400k at 1,007 theaters, which is a solid number considering it also hit VOD yesterday. The Personal History of David Copperfield also opened with 171k from 1,360 sites.

Next weekend, we see Christopher Nolan’s Tenet take on COVID-19 in the theaters. This is by far the most high-profile release in a while, and hopefully, it will really bring people back to the cinemas after The New Mutants gave its little springboard.