Afraid I have to disagree as well. It's all relative to the budget and expectations of the market.
Of course an independent movie with a $5 million budget would be ecstatic at a $47 million weekend.... but a Star Wars or Marvel movie would be a bomb with that take.
Ghostbusters is more in line with Star Wars/Marvel.... you don't make a Ghostbusters movie to do anything but make money. That's its goal.
Ghostbusters is a brand on-par with Star Wars and Marvel? Sounds like you've been reading Sony's press releases for the GB reboot.
Star Wars and Marvel - arguably the two biggest pop culture franchises in history that each hold at least a half dozen of THE most iconic characters of all time? Versus a "franchise" that has NO identifiable characters to the man on the street (the reason it could be mercilessly and cynically rebooted the way it was)? In real terms, GB is only a notch or two above something like Gremlins: all concept, one major hit movie and a disappointing sequel from 30 years ago, and sporadic/middling merchandising success over the years.
Look, the opening is mediocre for sure and well on the weaker side of middling - and the road ahead is definitely rocky (the fact it can't get a release in China due to superstitious content(!) is bad) - but a lot of what's being written in this thread is simply "glass half empty" informed only by preconceived hate. Not based on either the movie itself or the actual business reality.
To be TRUTHFUL you have to also at least look at the "glass half full" side - because in this case, there is one. As I said, this didn't open to $18-22 million as it easily could have. We've heard from the Freaks "experts" (it always cracks me up to see you guys doing your little "analysis" and "breakdowns"
) so in the interest of balance, let's hear from some
actual experts on the GB opening weekend:
boxofficeguru:
"... looking at how the box office has performed this year, the performance was encouraging. Of the top ten opening weekends of 2016, only two are not cartoons or comic book movies. Those would be The Jungle Book at $103.3M and now Ghostbusters. In fact, breaking $40M on opening weekend has been very difficult all year for live-action movies outside of super hero flicks. Ghostbusters enjoyed only a 5% dip from Friday to Saturday which is better than what similar films see at this time of year. Business with kids kicked in despite intense competition for that age group this summer. Midweek playability could allow Ghostbusters to finish with a domestic gross that comes close to its production cost."
Forbes:
"...opened this weekend with a solid $46 million debut. Not the top film of the weekend, but that’s more about The Secret Life of Pets over-performing than Ghostbusters under-performing. It’s a big debut, be it #1 or #10 for the weekend. It is just behind the $54m opening of The Martian for Kirsten Wiig’s best live-action opening. This is even big for Chris Hemsworth, coming in below only the MCU films and Snow White and the Huntsman ($56m). It’s the third-biggest live-action opening of the summer behind X-Men: Apocalypse and Captain America: Civil War. And just this year, it’s the second biggest live-action/non-superhero opening thus far behind only Walt Disney’s The Jungle Book. So in a summer of many underperforming would-be franchises, this one broke out about as big as could’ve been hoped."
So there you have it. A bit more balanced and fact-informed thread again.
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