Who’s hungry for some Monday afternoon schadenfreude? Released just three days after the resignation of FIFA president Sepp Blatter, the reportedly execrable FIFA-funded United Passions—about the history of the beleaguered athletic association, and featuring Tim Roth as a suspiciously heroic and dashing Blatter—made just $607 in the U.S this weekend. Let that sink in for a minute. Even if you charitably calculate using the lower end of national admission prices—the film opened in 10 markets, all big cities—there’s no way this glorified advertisement for FIFA sold more than 80 tickets total. More people probably turned out for your kids’ indoor soccer match on Saturday.
The good-bad news keeps coming. Another real ego stroke of a movie, this one also featuring a rich dick who can’t stop talking about balls, flopped this weekend. In a development that could serve as a one-episode cliffhanger of the show that spawned it, Entourage totally took it on the chin. Even with a two-day head start on the rest of the weekend’s new movies, this overextended sitcom episode landed in fourth place, grossing only $17 million. That’s Medellin numbers, bro. Kevin Dillon is going to have to move to Queens now. Kevin Connolly is going to really have to work at a pizza place. Jeremy Piven is…no, the Piv will be fine. Guy can flex a temple vein like nobody else.
For their celebrity-sighting fix, America turned instead to the reasonably star-studded Spy, whose $30 million opening was enough to win it the weekend. That’s a little better than Tammy did last summer and a little worse than The Heat did the summer before; any way you slice it, Melissa McCarthy can open a movie. (Check back with us next summer, when she’ll surely grab another $30 million or so in comedic counterprogramming.) Spy managed to make short work of Insidious: Chapter 3, which landed in third place, right below San Andreas, with $23 million—considerably more than the sleeper-hit original managed to make out the gate, but also a good deal less than the first sequel grossed in its inaugural weekend. The modestly budgeted fright flick nonetheless did solid business overseas, meaning that we can probably expect more ghost hunts and Lin Shaye appeareances.
Rounding out the top five was A.V. Club favorite Mad Max: Fury Road, hanging in there with another $7.9 million. The post-apocalyptic sequel has quietly doubled its $150 million budget on a global scale. That won’t earn headlines in an age when the seventh Fast & Furious movie is now the fourth biggest worldwide hit of all time. But it could help George Miller, and other visionaries of his ambition and audacity, get their expensive passion projects funded. What’s the opposite of schadenfreude?
For more detailed numbers, visit Box Office Mojo.