‘Christopher Robin’ Rules With $1.5 Million at Thursday Night Shows
By Dave McNary
LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – Disney’s live-action “Christoper Robin” has opened with a respectable $1.5 million in Thursday night preview showings in North America.
Lionsgate’s action-comedy “The Spy Who Dumped Me” took in $950,000 in previews, while Fox’s sci-fier “The Darkest Minds” launched with a quiet $550,000 at 2,575 venues.
The preview number for “Christopher Robin” topped Disney’s “A Wrinkle in Time,” which opened with $1.3 million in Thursday previews and went on to a $33 million opening weekend in March.
“” is expected to battle the second weekend of Tom Cruise’s “Mission: Impossible – Fallout” for first place as both titles head for Friday-Sunday totals of around $30 million. “” has been pegged to finish in the $10 million to $13 million range.
“Christoper Robin,” based on the characters from A.A. Milne’s Winnie the Pooh books, hopes to draw nostalgia lovers and their children when it opens on 3,602 screens Friday. Ewan McGregor plays an adult version of Winnie the Pooh’s old pal Christopher Robin. He’s become a businessman who has lost his sense of imagination in pre-World War II England, so Pooh, Piglet, Tigger, and Eeyore come to life to help him.
Marc Forster directed from the comedy-drama from a screenplay by Alex Ross Perry and Allison Schroeder. Jim Cummings returns to voice Winnie the Pooh and Tigger, while Brad Garrett joins as Eeyore. The cast includes Hayley Atwell, Bronte Carmichael, and Mark Gatiss. Reviews have been mixed to positive with a 63% score on Rotten Tomatoes.
Paramount’s sixth installment of the “Mission: Impossible” franchise may repeat as the weekend’s winner after dominating last weekend with a series-best $61.2 million at 4,395 locations. “Fallout” has grossed $83.9 million domestically in its first six days.
Lionsgate-Imagine’s “ The Spy Who Dumped Me ” opens at 3,111 venues and stars Mila Kunis and Kate McKinnon as best friends who get chased through Europe by assassins. Susanna Fogel directed and co-wrote with David Iserson, while Justin Theroux, Gillian Anderson, Hasan Minhaj, and Sam Heughan round out the cast. “Spy” carries a 39% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
Prospects are downbeat for Fox’s “” with forecasts around $8 million when it opens on 3,127 screens. The movie, which carries a $34 million price tag, is based on Alexandra Bracken’s novel and set in a dystopian America where a group of teenagers are on the run from the government after mysteriously obtaining superpowers. The film stars Amandla Stenberg, Mandy Moore, and Gwendoline Christie. Reviewers have been unimpressed with a Rotten Tomatoes score of 15%.
Dinesh D’Souza’s controversial documentary “Death of a Nation: Can We Save America a Second Time?” is aiming for about $3 million at 1,002 locations this weekend. Released by Quality Flix, the film equates President Donald Trump to Abraham Lincoln and savages liberals, comparing them to Nazis. Owen Gleiberman said in his review for Variety, “‘Death of a Nation’ breaks through to a whole new slime-o-sphere of over-the-top ideological libel.”
Thanks to strong performances by “Avengers: Infinity War,” “Incredibles 2,” and “Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom,” summer domestic box office is up a hefty 10.4% to $3.46 billion as of Aug. 1, according to comScore. Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst with comScore, noted that the gap with the 2017 summer should widen in coming weeks due to August, 2017, being one of the slowest on record. Year-to-date domestic box office is also leading last year by 7.6% at $7.4 billion.
