A long, strange, R-rated thriller with no major movie stars, A Cure For Wellness was never going to be a runaway blockbuster success story. But it’s still disheartening that Gore Verbinski’s crazed genre whatsit flopped so hard over the President’s Day weekend. The movie landed in tenth place and made back only a tenth of its budget, its $4.2 million opening dooming it to a swift disappearance from multiplexes. Hollywood so rarely takes a risk on a non-franchise property, which renders Cure’s dismal performance all the more disappointing, because it’ll make it harder for something this unconventional to get funding in the future. That new Lego movie wasn’t going anywhere, guys! It didn’t need your money. The gonzo horror fairy tale did.
Nothing new to theaters made much of an impact this weekend. The Great Wall, that Chinese-American coproduction starring Matt Damon under some bushy facial hair and a baffling accent, scored the best debut of the newcomers: Its $18 million was enough to secure a third place finish, but not nearly enough to put a dent into its $150 million budget. (That said, it’s already made $262.7 million worldwide, which is the whole point of a multi-market, cross-national event movie anyway.) While a small percentage of the country shrugged and decided to go see Matt Damon square off against unconvincing CGI space lizards, even fewer paid for the spectacle of Charlie Day going toe-to-toe with Ice Cube. Down in fifth place, Fist Fight grossed a pretty underwhelming $12 million, possibly sparing us from a lame sequel where the characters’ wives or dads or sons fight.
Otherwise, the box office looked a lot like it did a week ago, as The Lego Batman Movie repeated at no. 1 with an additional $34 million, Fifty Shades Darker held down the runner-up position with another $20 million, and John Wick: Chapter 2 dropped one spot to fourth place with $16.5 million, all but assuring that a third round of balletic mayhem is in Keanu’s future. Can Jordan Peele’s directorial debut Get Out unseat these holdovers next weekend? Let’s hope so. Interesting studio horror movies need that green to grow, after all.
For more detailed numbers, visit Box Office Mojo.