We don’t need to discuss Avengers: Age of Ultron too much this week, do we?  It once again won the box office, as expected. It did drop 59% from last week, which if took at face value, would seem bad. Generally the average movie falls about 50% from opening weekend to the following; good movies, a bit less, bad movie,s a bit more. Really bad movies, a lot more. But when a movie makes the second most money EVER, than all that gets thrown out the window. Of course, it was going to fall off by a lot. It still made $77 million this weekend and averaged $18k per theater. Just in case you didn’t think that’s a lot of money, that $77 million would have won the weekend every single other weekend this year except for three, the weekends that Furious 7, 50 Shades of Grey, and American Sniper opened, and 50 Shades and Sniper didn’t beat it by much. It’s also the second highest gross for a movie ever, by the way, second only to the original Avengers.

So far Age of Ultron has made $313 million for Danielle’s team. It’s also made $875 million worldwide, which is pretty impressive considering it, for some reason, hasn’t opened in China or Japan. It will do so this week, which means it will probably break the $1 billion mark this weekend. Worldwide grosses don’t matter here, but it’s still interesting.

But enough about Avengers. The real story of the weekend was, how bad was Hot Pursuit? SOOOOOOOOOO bad. $13 million opening, bad. A C+ CinemaScore*, bad. Worse than the last time Reese Witherspoon made a comedy, which had a 26% RT score and only made $54 million, bad. John Oliver had the perfect burn for this movie that I wish I had thought of, bad. It will be lucky if it makes $35 million, bad. Or, just REALLY bad.

*CinemaScore is an arbitrary rating, where they get random people coming out of a movie to grade it. It’s probably a very small sample size and doesn’t feel very accurate. And yet, it seems to be the way that the movie industry rates how well movies will do in the following weeks. Which makes perfect sense, since this is an industry that still bases its decisions on Nielsen ratings.

I’d like to point out that when Danielle had the original Avengers 3 years ago, in that movie’s second weekend, it went up against Liz’s crappy movie as well. And Dark Shadows starring Johnny Depp, did pretty shitty that weekend too.

Small movie round up:

• Far From the Madding Crowd expanded into 99 theaters (from 10) and made $777k this weekend. That pushes its total over $1.25 million.
• The D Train derailed (get it?), making only $447k. It averaged only $444 per theater, which is pretty bad. The good, small movies don’t gross a ton, but per theater average will tell you if they’re ultimately going to be successful. This evidently, will not.
• 5 Flights Up made $306k and averaged $2,741 per theater. Maybe they’ll end up making some money on that old Brooklyn 2 bedroom with charm and roof access.
• I do not have a pun for Maggie, but it did not do very well. It only made $131k this weekend. It had a better per theater average than D Train, with $1,660, so it may do slightly better in the long run. But honestly, this one might not have much life (there it is!).
• Hunting Elephants… um, didn’t come out yet? Already came out? Is not going to come out? I have no idea. I can’t find anything on this movie. If I were like 8 inches taller and 100 pounds lighter, I’d just drop this movie and pick a different one.

Standings

1. Danielle: A zillion dollars
2. Everyone else: Nowhere near enough

Here’s the actual scoreboard, but it basically says the same thing:

1. Danielle: $325 million
2. Liz: $16 million
3. Rhys: $447k
4. Danny: $282k
5. Andy: $131k
6. Jenny: $0
7. Sean: 0$
8. Tanya: $0

But each new weekend brings a new crop of movies, and with that, hope. This weekend’s slate is the first one of the summer that brings us multiple nationwide releases and looks like its going to be pretty competitive. The most interesting part is that all these movies are good! 3 of the 4 movies coming out this weekend scored 90% or higher on Rotten Tomatoes, one of which scored 99%! The 4th movie got a solid 70%. Exciting right? I bet you’d like to know which one got the 99%. Or maybe you want to know what the lower scoring movie was. Well I guess you’ll have to just keep reading to find out.

Coming Attractions (May 15)

Pitch Perfect 2 (Liz)

I may or may not be very excited for this movie. I may or may not have watched the first one on a plane and really enjoyed it. Like too much enjoyment for a plane, enjoyed it. I may or may not have cried while watching it on a plane. I may or may not have a thing for a cappella mash-ups. I may or may not have really confused feelings about said “thing” because my gut reaction to the phrase (word?) “a cappella” is “Fuuuuuck that!” and then envision myself slapping a notebook full of music out of a dork’s hands. But I may or may not have really liked Pitch Perfect. And I may or may not have really enjoyed at least one season of Glee. What the hell may or may not be wrong with me?

So I will totally be seeing this movie. It’s just a matter of when. Maybe it’ll be on a plane again, as I inappropriately cry tears of joy. Maybe it’ll be at my apartment watching it on HBO by myself, you know, taking a little “me time.” Then, I would tell everyone that I watched The Raid 2 instead. (That’s a bad example, because I might actually watch The Raid 2 instead.)

This movie is interesting because the first movie was successful, but not in a way you’d think. Pitch Perfect opened in only 335 theaters in the end of September. The following weekend, after great reviews and making an amazing $15k per theater*, it expanded to 2700 theaters and made $14 million . It stayed in theaters for 20 weeks and went on to make $65 million. The success of this movie is that it only cost $17 million to make.

*Not to mention all those people coming out of the theater, skipping and singing Party in the USA. They probably just took those CinemaScore report cards and threw them in the air and performed a wonderful dance number. The CinemaScore guys in their glasses and lab coats were probably all frowning and confused, but then got caught up in the excitement and joined in the dance routine for the third verse. Are you guys seeing the awesome music video that I’m picturing? If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go watch 4 hours of SportsCenter on loop.

Now, this makes for two sides to this Pitch Perfect 2 coin. One, it’s opening in the summer, they’ve upped the budget (only $29 million, so no huge red flags there), and they’re advertising during the NBA playoffs (apparently, I’m in the dead center of that venn diagram). The other side of the coin is that this is a classic case of “maybe we should just let a good movie be a good movie and not fuck with it.” It kinda seems like this is going to be the same jokes, the same romance, the same kind of singing and dancing (that I apparently love), just more of it. Which isn’t neccessarily a bad thing. It’s just, did there need to be a sequel to the first one? Absolutely not.

It looks like critics agree with me. It earned a RT score of 70%, which is by no means a bad score. It just means that reviews were on the positive side of mixed. There were plenty of good reviews, a couple bad ones, and a good amount of “I liked it, but…” reviews. Well, except this guy:

SOR-REE Mr. Willie Waffle of WaffleMovies.com! If I’m going to continue being a 14 year old girl for this part of the post, (and my love of a cappella movies has enabled that) I can’t even with this. Every aspect of it, makes me literally not able to. I want to can, but I can’t! From the uppity review, to his sassy picture, to his ridiculous name, to the fact that he uses his ridiculous name in his movie reviewing website, which looks like it was originally made with Anglefire and uses the word cineplex.* Don’t worry Willie the Waffle, I’m gonna be coming back to you for your opinion on all the latest talkies!

*It turns out he reviews movie for some DC area CW affiliate. So, he obviously thinks he’s way more important than he is. Just like that fucker Sandy Kenyon. Look at this giant bag of hot air. He literally looks like a penis with a wig on top.

Mad Max: Fury Road (Danny)

I bet you didn’t guess that this is the movie that is 99% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, did you? That’s right! This movie is just as good as Selma, The Godfather: Part II, Dr. Strangelove, and Finding Nemo. And it’s BETTER than Jaws, Up, Vertigo, The Hurt Locker and 8 1/2. Mad Max: Fury Road is the highest rated movies in Sumofale history, beating out Before Midnight (98%), Moonrise Kingdom (94%) and The Avengers (92%). The consensus seems to be, and I’m paraphrasing, Fucking Nuts, Amazing to Look at, and a Shit-ton of Fun. Even my man Willie the Waffle says:

He gave it two and a half waffles out of four. I wish I made that last sentence up.

2 anecdotes about this movie:

My boss, a 5-foot-nothing, Vietnamese lady, has been fired up for this movie for MONTHS. I’ve asked her several times this year, “How was your weekend? What did you do?” and she has answered “Oh well, I wanted to see that Mad Max movie, but it’s not out yet.” This has been happening since January! I’m very excited to see what her reaction. Stay tuned.

A couple weeks ago I was at a bachelor party and I overheard some kid (Kid. Sigh, he was like 27) say that this movie  “looks like Waterworld”. Motherfucker, Waterworld looks like this movie! The post-apocalyptic, dystopian themes that are prevalent in Waterworld were esentially an ode to Mad Max. It’s basically Road Warrior in the water. Don’t make me feel old. Shit, I already do.

Slow West (Danielle)

Slow West is only opening in 1 theater in LA and 1 theater in NYC this weekend, so don’t expect big box office numbers. It is opening in another 30-40 theaters the following weekend though. I have no idea if this is good or bad for box office, but it’s also available On Demand starting this weekend. I’d wager on “bad for box office.” If there were a way to track how much money a movie makes On Demand, I would include it in that movie’s take, since that only seems fare. Luckily, there’s not.

Besides being a teeny, tiny movie, working against Slow West is the fact that it’s a western. Westerns do not typically do very well at the box office, with the top 5 being Dances With Wolves, True Grit, Django Unchained, Rango and Wild Wild West. Those were successful movies (yes, even Wild Wild West made $100 million), but they were nationwide releases in 3000+ theaters and only one of them, Rango, opened to more than $30 million, and that was an animated movie.

Slow West gets an RT score of 89% (I know, I know, I said 3 out of 4 movies got 90% or above, but it changed in the 3 hours in which I originally wrote that, and if I change it, it’ll disrupt the flow. Just round up, you goddamn pedant.) So, it’s pretty good and will be expanding, just don’t expect too much from it this weekend. But who knows, the aforementioned Dances With Wolves opened to $600k in only 14 theaters and that went on to make $184 million.

I’ll See You in My Dreams (Andy)

Who wouldn’t fall in love with Sam Elliott? That voice is like velvet. You know, sometimes you fall in love, sometimes love falls in you… Right? Something like that. Or not.

This movie is apparently fantastic, with an RT score of 95%. Every review says that Blythe Danner is incredible. If they made movie stocks (remember when this was trying to be an actual thing), I’d by up Blythe Danner Oscar stock.

My man Waffle-faced Willie did not review this movie. Probably had to spend too much time reviewing The Flash (which is super dope by the way) for DCW 50, updating his Geocities subscription and doing appearances on C-SPAN:

So I’ll take the reigns on this one, according to the plot synopsis, her dog dies in this movie. Fuck this movie. 1/2 a waffle.

Prediction:

1. Mad Max ($65 million)
2. Avengers: Age of Ultron ($48 million)
3. Pitch Perfect 2 ($28 million)

Other notables

• Hot Pursuit ($8 million)
• Slow West ($120k)
• I’ll See You in My Dreams ($210k)

Have a great weekend everybody!