In its second weekend, the Woketardathon called In The Heights dived to a dismal sixth place at the box office, which confirms its status as a historic “bomb.”
So, surprise, surprise, the so-called “experts” were wrong again. After the Experts predicted In the Heights would open anywhere between $20 and $50 million last week, Lin-Manuel Miranda’s musical celebration of skin color bombed like every other piece of woke crap before it, with a dismal $11 million opening.
Ah, but desperate to hold on to their Experting credentials, the Experts told us that the millions and millions of In the Heights fans must have stayed home to watch Woke Talking Points Set to Songs No One’s Familiar With on HBO Max. But then we were all knocked over with a feather upon learning that even though tens of millions could watch it for free on HBO Max, The 145-Minute Movie With No Stars and No Story bombed there, as well.
Then the Experts hit us with the “legs” narrative.
Those who’ve gone to see A Celebration of Culture So Forced It Feels Oppressive love it! The Experts told us, So this sucker will have legs!
Word of mouth will make it this summer’s sleeper hit! They said.
Except…
No.
In the Heights not only failed to launch a second-weekend comeback, but it also collapsed 62 percent and crash-landed into sixth place with a three-day gross of just — LOL — $4.5 million.
After ten days, Dance, Song, and Woketard Talking Points sits at a disastrous $19.2 million, which means it will be lucky to squeak over $30 million, which means it won’t even come close to recouping its $55 million production budget and a marketing budget that probably fell somewhere between $20 and $30 million.
How awful is this?
Well, while In the Heights swan-dived in its second weekend with just $4.5 million, it lost to three titles in their third and fourth weekends. In their fourth week, A Quiet Place Part II grossed $9 million (bringing its total to $125 million), and Cruella (which is a bit of a bomb itself) grossed $5.1 million (total: $65 million). In its third week, The Conjuring 3 grossed $5 million (total: $54 million).
Oh, and with its 3,509 theaters, In the Heights is currently playing on anywhere from 160 to 400 more screens than the five titles that beat it this weekend, including newcomer The Hitman’s Bodyguard’s Wife (aka The Sequel No One Asked For), which opened to $15 million on 3,331 screens.
People can blame the pandemic all they want, but how do they explain A Quiet Place II’s box office success? ($125 million after four weeks), which is pacing fairly close to Part 1 ($148 million after four weeks).
The pandemic isn’t what’s keeping people away. The success of A Quiet Place 2 proves that people will come out to see movies that appeal to them.
It is really something, especially after the failure of Wonder Woman 1984, Birds of Prey, Charlie’s Angels, Ghostbusters 3, Terminator: Dark Fate, Men in Black 4, and the glaring underperformance of the later Star Wars movies, that Hollywood continues to flush hundreds of millions of dollars down the toilet with one woke catastrophe after another.
In a way, it reminds me of the aughts when Hollywood produced some 30 anti-War on Terror movies, and every single one of them (without exception) was humiliated at the box office. What’s happening today is even worse. At the very least, most of those anti-war flicks were low-to-mid budget dramas. Today’s Woketard catastrophes are not only big-budget tentpoles; they’re vital franchises. Basically, these woke suicide runs are killing the golden geese, brands that reliably produced box office hits.
The general public hates Woke so much the Star Wars film franchise has been damaged, probably beyond repair. What had been a reliable box office phenomenon, one that even survived those stillborn prequels, is now just one more tentpole.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here.
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