‘Split’ Dings ‘Rings’; No Oxygen For ‘Space’;

3rd Update, Friday 10:39PM: There hasn’t even been a kickoff yet, so don’t even try to blame the Super Bowl for the lackluster performance of this weekend’s new entries, Paramount’s Rings and STX’s teen romance The Space Between Us which are respectively opening to $12.8M in second and $3.8M in seventh. 

Money was left on the table here by those distributors who decided to opt out. Sunday aside, this is a weekend where the right testosterone property (American Sniper, Taken in previous years) can truly pull the guys in, especially over Friday and Saturday. Counterprogramming works too aka anything that shoots for females. However, the property has to be big enough to stoke them, i.e. Hannah Montana, or a Nicholas Sparks bestseller, and we have two titles here–Rings and Space–going after teen girls.

Slowing Rings considerably is the holdover power of M. Night Shyamalan in all his thrilling glory. Paramount properly spaced Rings three weeks away from Universal/Blumhouse’s genre title, however, no one knew Split was going to be this big: It’s the first title in Shyamalan’s resume to hold the No. 1 spot at the B.O. for three weeks in a row since 1999’s The Sixth Sense (that movie dominated for five weeks at the top spot through Labor Day weekend). Late night estimates put Split at $14.7M for the weekend, and a running cume by Sunday of $98.8M, -8% behind Sixth Sense at the same point in time. That movie ended its stateside run at a phenomenal $293.5M, but don’t expect Split to put those kinds of figures as it will be slowed by the pre-Valentine’s Day gang of Lego Batman, Fifty Shades Darker and John Wick: Chapter 2 next Friday.

Some executives believe that Rings’ opening is OK in light of the awful reviews it received with a Rotten Tomatoes score of 6%. But truly, if you think about it, this is an awful start for a once-classic millennial horror franchise. And at a $25M production cost, and reported  high $20M to low $30M stateside P&A, Rings would have had to debut to $20M to be considered a theatrical success. Comps are being made to Uni/Blumhouse’s Ouija: Origin of Evil, but that movie had a lower overhead with a $9M production cost and global take near $82M.

Ever since New Line started rebooting vintage classic horror titles with The Texas Chainsaw Massacre in 2003 ($28M opening), the B.O. trend has been that most of these high-gloss remakes open to $20M-plus, i.e.2009’s Friday the 13th ($40.5M), 2010’s A Nightmare on Elm Street ($32.9M), 2007’s Halloween ($26.3M), and the list goes on. Heck, even the poorly received redux of MGM’s Poltergeist from 20th Century Fox debuted to $22.6M. The first two Ring movies rang up $410.7M in combined worldwide takes, and when a vintage title such as this has been absent for close to 12 years, there should be a notable want-to-see. There’s not, and fans aren’t happy with what they saw Friday night: Rings received the lowest CinemaScore of the series with a C-, which ranks below Ring‘s B- and Ring Two‘s C+.

The horror films that currently excel in the market are propelled by huge Rotten Tomatoes scores and are very much auteur-driven to the point where a name like James Wan alone brings in busloads. Rings lacks a notable filmmaker at its helm, and it’s funny, because the first two movies arguably met the criteria of today’s horror standards: the 2002 Ring was overseen by then-burgeoning visionary Gore Verbinski and boasted a 72% fresh RT score, while Ring Two was directed by the property’s original Japanese maestro Hideo Nakata.  

One rival marketing executive remarked that the Rings campaign was confusing from the onset, and it never defined for the audience whether it was a remake or a reboot. Early spots felt like a remake (there was a scene where a girl answers an old 1990s phone–see below) while closing spots introduced more elements that made Rings feel like a reboot. “They (the studio) never answered the fundamental question of why they needed a sequel,” said another studio marketing exec who handles horror, “The young people who go to horror don’t remember the original, and the people who do know it didn’t have the question answered for them.”

On social, RelishMix reports that the conversation for Rings was mixed, further challenged by the limited social activation by its cast (Big Bang Theory‘s Johnny Galecki was the prime tubthumper with 1.6M Instagram followers).

“Many moviegoers are tired of horror remakes and even compare what video materials they’re seeing for Rings to Poltergeist, Evil Dead and other recent remakes.  Plenty of comments poke fun at the very center of the plot, as in ‘if you just don’t watch the short video of the girl… you’re OK, right?’ Further, the horror audience is very aware that this movie is based on a Japanese classic, and they’re wondering what new elements might come from Rings.  They certainly don’t like the element of a landline phone, which is in the video clips and has been mentioned several times in convo,” observes RelishMix.

Sources close to the property say that there was research early on that justified the need to make another Ring movie, especially among its young female target audience. In Paramount’s defense, they continually jumped Rings around the calendar, trying to find the best date: First it was Nov. 13, 2015, then April 1, 2016, and then Oct. 28. But Ouija: Origin of Evil, another PG-13 title was opening the weekend before, so Rings rolled to Super Bowl weekend.

There’s no money to be made from STX’s The Space Between Us even if the studio’s share of the $30M production cost was less than $3.7M after foreign licensing, tax credits and co-financing: They’re still on the hook for a $20M estimated P&A. Those CinemaScore audiences who bought tickets to the Peter Chelsom-directed movie gave it an A- while critics shot it down with a 15% Rotten Tomatoes score. With an opening this low, that grade means nothing. The pic squarely targeted young female millennials with its weepy relationship between a boy on Mars and a girl on Earth. But when you’re a movie going after that audience, it pays to be based on a bestselling piece of YA literature, not an original piece of IP. That’s the biggest hurdle here for Space Between Us. Further complicating its fate is that the movie doesn’t have any stars ala Jennifer Lawrence, Channing Tatum, or Shailene Woodley that teen girls would go out of their way to watch. Originally, this movie was scheduled to be slaughtered over the holiday season. Unfortunately moving it to a less-busy frame isn’t doing Space any favors.

Sony Pictures Classics’ The Comedian, which critics have thrown apples at with a 24% RT rating, is suffering with less than $1000 per theater at 848 sites for a weekend of $767K. Sean Penn was originally set to direct Robert De Niro with Kristen Wiig back in October 2011 from Art Linson and Comedy Central roastmaster Jeffrey Ross’ script. Mike Newell stepped in when the movie secured its financing, but then stepped out due to scheduling. By July 2015, Taylor Hackford was aboard to steer the ship. SPC tried to give this movie a push during awards season, premiering at November’s AFI fest, but the pic didn’t catch on in the clever way that Martin Scorsese’s previous De Niro stand-up feature The King of Comedy did in 1982. Also, it’s hard to make movies about stand-ups in an era when Louis C.K. authentically owns the sub-genre and elevates it to cinematic class with FX’s Emmy-winning Louie. You can’t compete with that, and any film critic with any innate knowledge and fandom for Louie is going to juxtapose Comedian to that high-bar. Like Gold and The Founder, The Comedian wasn’t in the awards conversation, and the fact that reviewers loathe it spells bad business for this older adult comedy.

The box office battle between SAG cast ensemble winner Hidden Figures and PGA/ seven-time Golden Globe winner La La Land is real with the Ted Melfi-directed female African American NASA number crunchers movie taking over the running cume of the Emma Stone-Ryan Gosling musical by an estimated $600K for an estimated $119.7M by Sunday. Moviegoers are moved by Hidden Figures’ themes of unity and progress in the face of a controversial Trump presidency which is clamping down on immigration, and fostering hate. Many believe La La Land to be the Oscar best pic frontrunner, further propelled by its 14 noms. That alone is expected to rebound the original musical past Hidden Figures in the end. But at this point in time, Hidden Figures has the edge stateside. Worldwide is a different story for La La Land as it will reach $250M by Sunday, and $300M by next weekend or when China opens on Feb. 14. That’s close to the $306M collected by 2002 Oscar best winning musical Chicago. 

RelatedForget About Being Oscar Best Pic Rivals, ‘La La Land’ & ‘Hidden Figures’ Are In A B.O. Battle

The Oscar-nominated feature documentary I Am Not Your Negro is posting the weekend’s best theater average with an estimated $10K and a three-day of $457K at 45 sites. The Magnolia released pic directed by Raoul Peck envisions late author and social critic James Baldwin’s unfinished book Remember This House. The docu analyzes race in America using Baldwin’s words, and connects black history from the Civil Rights through #BlackLivesMatter.

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