By Rebecca Rubin
If three new movies debut in theaters, but nobody goes to see them…
That is how Sony’s creepy thriller “The Invitation” managed to top box office charts with a paltry $7 million from 3,114 North American cinemas. Its win comes with some pretty weak bragging rights; it’s the lowest first-place finish since May 2021, when COVID was keeping lots of people at home and “Spiral” grossed only $4.5 million.
Now, it’s not the pandemic that’s preventing most audiences from going to theaters. It’s the lack of appealing options. Overall, the domestic box office generated just $52.7 million over the weekend, according to Comscore — the worst collective result in months.
And the bad times are expected to continue until at least late September or early October, when “Don’t Worry Darling” (Sept. 23), “Halloween Ends” (Oct. 14) and the comic book adaptation “Black Adam” (Oct. 21) open in theaters. It’s a disappointing finale to an otherwise strong summer at the movies, which fielded plenty of box office hits including “Top Gun: Maverick,” “Minions: The Rise of Gru,” “Thor: Love and Thunder” and “Elvis.”
Over the weekend, two other films – director George Miller’s R-rated fantasy “Three Thousand Years of Longing” and the John Boyega-led heist drama “Breaking” – also opened in cinemas to middling results, landing in seventh and 13th place, respectively.
“The Invitation” cost $10 million to produce, so it won’t take a ton of coinage to turn a profit. But negative reviews and its pesky “C” CinemaScore likely won’t be helpful in convincing people to go to theaters. Directed by Jessica M. Thompson, “The Invitation” follows Evie (Nathalie Emmanuel of “Game of Thrones” fame) who is invited to her long-lost family’s home in the English countryside, where she discovers sinister secrets.
“Original horror movies do not play particularly well overseas, but in this case the primarily British cast should help,” David A. Gross, who runs the movie consulting firm Franchise Entertainment Research, says of “The Invitation.”
Despite solid reviews, “Three Thousand Years of Longing,” which co-stars Idris Elba as a Djinn and Tilda Swinton as the scholar who gets three wishes, cratered in its debut with $2.87 million from 2,436 locations. It’s a terrible result for a movie that’s playing in thousands of theaters across the country. Industry experts blame the weak turnout on minimal promotional efforts, as well as the decision to open in wide release. A platform release, in which an arthouse movie plays in select theaters before expanding across the country, would have allowed “Three Thousand Years” to benefit from positive word-of-mouth. — Reuters
