The Secret Life of Pets 2 leashed with $16.5M opening day, Dark Phoenix flames out with $14.0M
6/8/19 UPDATE: It’s dark times for studio fare as audiences are fully rejecting both major releases this week; The Secret Life of Pets 2 and Dark Phoenix are set to fall at least 50% from their predecessors.
Pets 2’s estimated Friday gross of $16.5M is down 57% from the first film, and ranks as the second lowest opening day for an Illumination film behind 2011’s Hop (this figure does not include the $925K from Fandago early screeings). This puts the animated sequel on pace for a weekend in the $46M to $48M range, a truly shocking result given the enormity of the original and Illumination’s brand overall. With an $80M price tag, the film will likely be fine financially, but one has to wonder how the studio’s other sequels will do now (Minions 2 is currently slated to release during July next year).
The first major superhero franchise of the modern has turned to ash, as Dark Phoenix’s opening day estimate is anemic $14.0M, down 47% from Apocalypse. The outlook is even worse when discounting previews, as the true Friday gross of Dark Phoenix was a mere $9.0M, down 50.2% from its predecessor’s $18.1M pure Friday. The $200M superhero pic is now looking at a $31M to $33M weekend, a disastrous result. Worse still, even opening day audiences are not liking it; the film’s B- CinemaScore is quite low for a franchise film. A domestic finish below $80M seems plausible.
Among holdovers, Aladdin is still running strong with $7.0M Friday, but Godzilla 2 is looking to have one of the worst drops of the year. Grossing only $4.2M on Friday, the monster mash is set to fall a brutal 69% from last weekend. John Wick 3 seems to have finally stabilized, though, as it is dropped only 35% from last Friday for a $1.9M gross.
Dark Phoenix began its run right on track with my forecast, generating $5.0M from previews starting at 7PM along with IMAX fan events at 6PM. This is well below the $8.2M brought in by Apocalypse, which went on to a $65.7M gross over Memorial Day weekend in 2016. It’s also below the $6.3M from Godzilla 2’s 4PM previews which translated into a $47.7M. Among similarly released films, last year’s Ocean’s 8 grossed $4M from Thursday previews and $41.6M for the weekend. I expect Dark Phoenix to be more frontloaded on account of it being a comic book film, so a weekend in the $30M to $40M range looks right.
Illumination’s Pets 2 also got off to a rough start, with $2.3M in Thursday Previews (this does not include May 25 Fandango early screenings), less than half of Pets 1’s $5.3M take that translated into a $104.4M weekend. Other comps include How To Train Your Dragon 3 ($3M previews/$55.0M weekend), LEGO Movie 2 ($1.5M/$34.4M), LEGO Batman ($2.2M/$53.0M), Cars 3 ($2.8M/$53.7M), The Grinch ($2.2M/$67.6M), and Hotel Transylvania 3 ($2.6M/$44.1M). The best performing of those were all in non-summer months, while Cars 3 and Hotel 3 released in June and July respectively, so Pets 3 would seem to be on pace for a $40M to $50M weekend.