After two weeks on top of the weekend domestic box office, “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” still reigns.
With a $21.7 million gross, only a 37% drop from last week, “Shang-Chi” furthers its total domestic gross to just below $177 million. This is good enough for the second-highest gross this year, being only about $6 million behind its fellow Marvel Studios’ release “Black Widow.”
Expect “Shang-Chi” to pass the July release sometime this week. The one question remaining is whether or not it can hold on long enough to reach $250 million domestically, which would be an incredible feat, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Coming in second place in its sixth weekend is “Free Guy,” with a gross of $5.2 million. This movie has some insane legs, dropping less than 7% from last weekend. With a 94% Rotten Tomatoes’ Audience Score and an “A” rating from CinemaScore, it’s clear audiences love this film. With word of mouth playing a major factor in the film’s endurance, there is certainly a chance the film could reach $125 million domestically if enthusiasm continues to hold.
Debuting on the charts this weekend is Clint Eastwood’s “Cry Macho” which opened to a disappointing $4.5 million. While it is astounding that Eastwood is directing and starring in a film at 91 years old, poor reviews and a dual-release on HBO Max definitely hurt this film’s box office prospects. Carrying a reported $33 million budget, the movie has close to zero chance to turn a profit. Nonetheless, the film furthers the cinematic legend of Eastwood, who has now starred in movies for eight decades.
At numbers four and five are horror films “Candyman” with $3.5 million and “Malignant” with about $2.7 million. “Candyman” just became available on video on-demand this weekend, though that didn’t seem to impact its box office as it only dropped 27%. Malignant dropped 51% week to week, making its box-office run in the top five likely to end soon.
Next weekend comes the release of a film confusing box-office prognosticators, “Dear Evan Hansen.” The film is an adaptation of the Tony Award-winning 2015 musical of the same name.
This film’s box-office is difficult to predict for a variety of reasons. For one, the musical was extremely successful. With Ben Platt returning as the lead character, big opening may be ahead next weekend. However, the film has received poor reviews from critics thus far, many saying that Platt (age 27) is miscast as the lead high-school aged character, even with prosthetic makeup. Additionally, “In The Heights,” another hit musical adaptation, came to the silver screen with extremely positive critical reviews and still did poorly at the box-office. Because of this, it seems likely “Dear Evan Hansen” will disappoint this weekend, probably only grossing between $8 million and $12 million.
However, that is just a prediction. Time will tell who rules the box office next week.
