This weekend The Rock is getting squashed by a horde of bloodsucking vampires as Sony Animation’s
Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation is the prime destination for families with an estimated
$42.2M, knocking down
Dwayne Johnson’s
Skyscraper to third place with
$24.2M, a low result for the action star in his recent solo PG-13 credits. The opening for
HT3 currently ranks behind
Hotel Transylvania 2‘s $48.4M, and the first installment’s $42.5M, however, by Sunday could rep the second-best debut for the Adam Sandler ensemble series.
There’s a few reasons why
Skyscraper is in shambles, but chiefly Johnson’s family crowd here is being swallowed up whole by both
HT3 and the second weekend of Disney/Marvel’s
Ant-Man and the Wasp which remains solid with an estimated $28.1M in second place. Another reality is that the last two weeks of the year brings in more multiplex traffic than the middle of July, which is one of the reasons why Johnson ensemble,
Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, didn’t have a problem legging out in the face of
Star Wars: The Last Jedi to become the highest grossing title of his career stateside with $404.5M.
Some will say that
Skyscraper is shackled by the fact that it’s original IP in a franchise-laden marketplace of
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, Incredibles 2, etc. I don’t necessarily buy that because Sony’s
Jumanji was a dusty brand completely reinvigorated in its concept and comedy that outpaced
Last Jedi in its wide-weekend play, 14 weekends to 8 weekends. If the premise and execution are intriguing enough, people will come out in droves, and clearly moviegoers aren’t feeling that with
Skyscraper in its
Die Hard redux.
In regards to the sour chatter on social media, RelishMix reports that
Skyscraper “literally looks like a
Die Hard update, but with a hero challenged by a prosthetic. And, as unlikely as it might seem, some comments suggest some wear out with Johnson, as in he seems involved in all the recent Hollywood blockbusters. Some fans are asking, ‘Where’s the fresh face?'”
To that point, Sidney Poitier once dispensed some advice to Denzel Washington: “If they see you for free all week, they won’t pay to see you on the weekend”. While Johnson always gives a 1000% in promoting his films everywhere on social media and around the world, there is something to be said, that perhaps he may have overexposed himself this year on the marquee; that
Skyscraper could have benefited from being on next year’s slate, particularly with
Jumanji and
Rampage accounting for combined $1.4 billion worth of global ticket sales since late December.
While many in the industry questioned the kooky concept of the Rock paired with an ape and various monsters in
Rampage last April, Warner Bros. comes off looking like geniuses in hindsight by putting that pic ahead of the summer competition and milking the pic for all that it was worth (this despite the fact that it opened below its $40M projection and fell short of the century mark with $99M stateside). At $140M production cost and a $425.6M global gross, 38% of that coming from China, finance sources tell us that
Rampage will likely be around breakeven two years after its release once all markets have played out including foreign TV deals. Even with a B+ CinemaScore, just below the A-s of
Rampage and
San Andreas, it will be a hard road for
Skyscraper in regards to collecting black ink — certainly harder than
Rampage. Even with Wanda’s Legendary Entertainment involved here covering 50% of the reported $125M production cost, they may have assisted in getting more movie screens in the Middle Kingdom, but I’m informed that
Skyscraper is considered a U.S. production and will only see around 25% of its China B.O., and no downstream ancillaries.
Skyscraper bows in China via Legendary East on July 20.
‘Skyscraper’ Up In Flames With $24M+ As ‘Hotel Transylvania 3’ Books $42M+ Weekend Voyage
