On Twisters' Opening Weekend

When I heard that Twisters was actually happening I was not annoyed with the idea (the way I am, for example, annoyed by the fact that they just keep on making more crappy entries in the Alien franchise), but I was skeptical of its prospects. I was also not surprised when the opening projected for it, in spite of apparent "savior of summer" expectations in some quarters, was not especially high by the standard of $200 million blockbusters--and at Boxoffice Pro fell significantly over the weeks prior to release. (Their initial long-range forecast for the opening weekend was for $65-$95 million; by the week of release it was down to $60-$75 million, the ceiling fallen by a fifth.)

In the event the movie opened to $80 million domestically, and $123 million globally. The numbers are not exactly record-crushing--just decent domestically, and frankly disappointing internationally (The Hollywood Reporter admitting that the $43 million scored in 76 markets was not all that had been hoped for). Especially in the absence of a significant improvement in the international numbers the movie will need very good legs domestically to make back the studio's expenditure on it, never mind match the original (whose $242 million domestic gross in 1996 was the equivalent of a roughly half-billion dollar gross today). Alas, Deadpool & Wolverine comes out next week--and if it is rather a different sort of film, it is still competing with it in the action-spectacle sphere, and expected to be such a major event (a $200 million opening!) that it can be expected to cut into the audience for Twisters, just after it has become clear that Twisters needs every bit of help it can get. The result is that if the media coverage is mostly upbeat (and making full use of their punning skills to give the impression of success--"Twisters takes the market by storm," "Twisters whips up huge storm," etc.), barring very good holds in what will shortly become a much tougher market even Hollywood's courtiers (the ones who made Mad Max: Fury Road sound like it was some massive hit back in 2015) will become less generous in their appraisal.