WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING opening | PAWS OF FURY: THE LEGEND OF HANK opening | THE GRAY MAN next weekend | July 15 to 17, 2022 weekend
Opening weekend box office, charts and commentary
The current weekend: July 15 to 17, 2022
1) Where the Crawdads Sing opening
- This is a very good opening for a movie that combines young adult romance and suspense crime drama. Where the Crawdads Sing's weekend number is above average, in spite of weak reviews. These films have never been strong overseas, and that will be the case here as well.
- In past years, dramas of all kinds were a workhorse genre — there were 166 of them during the 10 years leading up to the pandemic. But attendance patterns have changed and most of these stories are now produced for the small screen. That makes this opening particularly good:
2) Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank opening
- This is a weak opening. The weekend start is below average for a single-episode animation release, and below average for an animation series launch as well. Reviews are soft. Animation travels well internationally and foreign business should be solid:
3) The Gray Man next weekend
- Next weekend, The Gray Man opens nationally in select theaters, and on Netflix. This is an espionage thriller with an A+ cast (Ryan Gosling, Ana de Armas, Chris Evans). At a budget of $200m (before marketing costs), it’s among the biggest espionage thriller productions in the history of the business.
- With a routine story, lukewarm reviews, and little to distinguish it apart from the cast, the movie would lose money with a conventional, big theatrical release — it would finish with around $165m+ in worldwide BO. However, that is not how Netflix releases its movies, and that is not how they measure their success:
- Next weekend has Jordan Peele’s Nope… as we slide into the dog days of summer.