“Well 2” wins, “Expendables 4” bombs at the box office
Warner Bros.’ “The Nun II” topped the domestic box office for the third weekend in a row, while Lionsgate’s “Expendables” franchise plummeted to an all-time low.
“The Nun II” grossed $8.4 million in its third outing, for a total of $69.2 million in North America, while “Expend4bles” debuted at 8 in the U.S. and Canada, according to estimates from measurement firm Comscore .3 million US dollars started.
The action saga starring Jason Statham and Sylvester Stallone has followed the film industry’s rule that returns for sequels are decreasing. Its predecessors — “The Expendables” (2010), “The Expendables 2” (2013) and “The Expendables 3” (2014) — opened with $34.8 million, $28.6 million, according to Box Office Mojo or $15.9 million.
The latest part of the series wasn’t modest anyway Projectionswhich was between about $15 million and $17 million domestically.
Rounding out the top five at the domestic box office this weekend was Disney and 20th Century Studios’ “A Haunting in Venice,” which grossed $6.3 million in its second release and $25.4 million in North America recorded; Sony Pictures’ “The Equalizer 3,” which grossed $4.7 million in its fourth run, for a North American total of $81.3 million; and Warner Bros.’ “Barbie,” which collected $3.2 million in its tenth weekend, for a North American total of $630.5 million.
It’s worth noting that Greta Gerwig’s feminist blockbuster is still among the top five performers at the box office more than a week after the film hit streaming.
Directed by Scott Waugh, Statham’s Christmas and Stallone’s Barney recruit a new team of mercenaries for a dangerous new mission in Expend4bles. Returning cast members include Dolph Lundgren and Randy Couture, while franchise newcomers include Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson, Megan Fox, Tony Jaa, Iko Uwais, Jacob Scipio, Levy Tran and Andy Garcia.
The film received a terrible 16% rating on review aggregation site Rotten Tomatoes and received a B-minus rating from viewers surveyed by CinemaScore. To make matters worse, film critic Katie Walsh called the title “the opposite of a must-watch.”
“As Christmas laughs on the roof of an SUV and wields a .50-caliber gun, it looks like the whole thing could have been shot in rear projection, the green screen work is so shoddy,” Walsh writes in her review for Tribune News Service.
“The moment is so incredibly bad and incredibly crazy that you just have to laugh in disbelief. But that’s far preferable to the rest of the film, which is incredibly boring.”
Next week will feature “Dumb Money” from Sony Pictures, “The Creator” from Disney and 20th Century Studios, “Saturday Night Inside Out” from Outsider Pictures and Shout! Studios’ “The Kill Room” as well as Lionsgate’s “Saw X” and Paramount Pictures’ “PAW Patrol: The Mighty Movie” – also known as “Saw Patrol”, the unofficial sequel to “Barbenheimer” on the Internet.
