Time and again and again, during the doldrums of 2014’s awful box office year, we were assured and reassured that 2015’s awesome slate would make up for everything. Halfway into the year, that is proving to not be the case. As of Friday, 2015 is only tracking a measly +2.5 ahead of 2014. It also looks as though this weekend will fall way short of this same weekend last year.
During the weekend of June 6-8 of 2014, the box office hauled in a total of $157 million. The top 10 were responsible for $154 million of that.
As of today, Deadline is predicting that the top 10 will bring in only $128 million this weekend. That’s around a -19% drop.
This same weekend last year was powered by the $48 million debut of the teen soaper “The Fault In Our Stars,” the second weekend “Maleficent” grab of $34.3 million, and the disappointing $28.7 million debut of “Edge of Tomorrow.” The top three alone brought in $111 million.
This weekend’s top three include the debut of “Spy” ($31.5 million), a solid second week for “San Andreas” ($26.3 million), and the okay debut of “Insidious: Chapter 3” ($21.7 million). That totals a measly $80 million.
Next weekend “Jurassic World” debuts, another title sold as a cure-all for 2014. Can the fourquel beat the one-two punch of last year’s “22 Jump Street” and “How to Train Your Dragon 2?” Both sequels debuted to a total of $107 million.
Still remaining in the 2015 quiver are “Ted 2” (June 26), “Terminator: Genisys” (July 1), “Minions” (July 10), “Ant-Man” and “Trainwreck” (July 17), “Pixels” (July 24), and “Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation” (July 31).
Can those 7 titles outperform these 7 titles from last year: “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes,” “Guardians of the Galaxy,” “Lucy,” Transformers 4,” “22 Jump Street” “How To Train Your Dragon 2” and “Tammy?”
I was pretty skeptical about all the optimism that 2015 was a no-brainer box office blowout year. On paper, with more X-Men, Apes, Transformers, Jump Street, Dragon, and Godzilla, 2014 sure looked like a no-brainer box office blowout year.
The problem last year wasn’t the slate, the problem was that the slate under-performed. Nothing held.
Already this year, “Avengers: Age of Ultron” is way-under-performing compared to the original ($561 million compared to $431 million), “Tomorrowland,” “Hot Pursuit,” and “Aloha,” are total faceplants, and “Mad Max: Fury Road” will probably fail to reach $150 million.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC
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