Just two weeks ago, Taylor Swift announced that her latest album, The Life of a Showgirl, would be accompanied by a feature film, The Official Release Party of a Showgirl. Considering her last film, The Eras Tour, brought in $261 million worldwide, it was clear that the balance of power in the box office universe was about to change.
To nobody’s surprise, The Official Release Party of a Showgirl, while less of a proper film than The Eras Tour and more of a listening party with behind-the-scenes documentary elements, completely dominated the box office this weekend. While its $33 million opening was a far cry from The Eras Tour’s $92 million three-day haul, that’s not a fair comparison. Eras was a full-on concert film, while Showgirl is not the same kind of high-level production.
It might be easy to blame Taylor Swift for “sabotaging” the rest of the movies playing this weekend (I’m sure Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson will do so in the coming days), but the truth is, The Smashing Machine never had much of a chance at breaking out into the mainstream. The film opened to $6 million, a third-place finish, and a poor start for the $50 million production. Amateur boxing and MMA aren’t glamorous sports compared to boxing. Movies like Warrior and The Wrestler, critically acclaimed films about MMA and amateur wrestling, respectively, topped out at just $23 million and $44 million, respectively. In fact, the ceiling on this type of movie is probably Here Comes The Boom, which earned $73 million back in 2012.
There’s also the matter of Rock “The Dwayne” Johnson’s star power being in flux following some high-profile bombs and critical failures (Black Adam, Red One, TV’s Young Rock), as well as behind-the-scenes drama among his Fast & Furious “family” and audience apathy over his ‘invincible everyman’ archetype. While The Smashing Machine is an attempt to elevate his profile as a serious actor, and it may very well succeed in that goal, it might be too little too late for audiences to take John “The Rock” Dwayneson seriously outside of his usual action hero wheelhouse. There’s a chance it could play well over the coming weeks and bounce back on home video if The Rock earns any awards nominations, but in terms of box office performance, it’s hard to characterize The Smashing Machine as anything other than a bust.
We skipped over second place to get to The Smashing Machine, so let’s head back there now. The silver medal went to the second weekend of One Battle After Another, which fell 49% to $11 million. The film’s domestic total sits at $42 million, and $101 million worldwide. With a budget of $130 million, it’s still got a way to go to become profitable, but… It could happen. Maybe.
Elsewhere, it’s a quiet weekend for the rest of the top 10. The IMAX 3D re-release of Avatar: The Way of Water brought in $3.1 million for a 7th place finish. This re-release is timed to lead into the December release of Avatar: Fire and Ash. By comparison, the similar re-release of the original film leading up to the release of The Way of Water opened to over $10 million. I wouldn’t call this a symptom of “Avatar fatigue” or anything, since The Way of Water is only two years old, while Avatar was 13 years old at the time of its re-release.
In 9th place, we find Good Boy, a high concept horror movie following the family dog as the lead character in a scary scenario. The film opened to $2.2 million, a decent result for an IFC Films project that will inevitably drive traffic to the Shudder streaming service. This week’s final new release of note, Bone Lake, opened in 13th place with just $828,000.
This week was a quiet one, but next week should pack a stronger punch, thanks to Roofman, starring Channing Tatum and Peter Dinklage, which has the potential become an unexpected sleeper hit. Even so, my eyes will be on Tron: Ares. Does the “almost blockbuster” Disney franchise have what it takes to finally become a genuine mainstream hit? We’ll find out next week… But you won’t find me placing bets on Jared Leto.
Related: Last Week’s Box Office Report
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