G.I. Joe Origins: Snake Eyes showed some promise before its release, but it is now clear that fans were not intrigued enough to buy a ticket to it, as Snake Eyes stumbled into second place with a paltry $13.3 million.
For a film with a $110 million production budget (not including any of the advertising costs, and it appears that plenty was spent to hype this film), a $13 million start for Snake Eyes will almost certainly put the toys back on the shelf, with little hope for a future G.I. Joe film or sequel.
International box office numbers are not currently available, but it is hard to believe that it will be enough to save this potential franchise reboot starring the most popular character from the toy line, cartoon, and comic book.
This week’s winner was the latest M. Night Shyamalan film, Old, which left many viewers feeling just “Bad”. With a terrible C+ CinemaScore (Snake Eyes got a slightly better B-), Old can claim victory over a slow weekend with $16.5 million, but the only thing that has aged less gracefully than the people in Shyamalan’s film is the time that Night fancied himself an education reformer when his movie career was on the rocks (it’s true, not one of the director’s “famous” twists). With a 51% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, it looks like people have had enough of the director’s Old tricks.
Last week’s winner, Space Jam: A New Legacy fell to fourth place with $9.5 million and Black Widow narrowly beat the Toon Squad with close to $11.6 million in receipts. If anything is proving to be true during the Pandemic box office, it is that hardcore fans are showing up on opening weekend and that casual fans are not ready to return to theaters en masse (especially when most of these new releases are available on streaming platforms).
It also looks like breaking the $200 million domestic box office mark is going to be a difficult one for the time being, with F9 overtaking A Quiet Place II for the current lead with $163 million to $157 million. Black Widow currently sits in third at $154, but with people opting to watch the film on Disney+ or not at all, the once assured victory over F9 may be in doubt, as those boys and their cars continue to do well at a pandemic-era box office.
Check back next week when Disney’s Jungle Cruise steams in, as well as A24’s take on a classic Arthurian legend, The Green Knight.