The blockbuster
The clock is surely running down on the Vin Diesel project. The Fast and Furious franchise has become his fiefdom – but the reality is that he has little firepower as an action star outside of it. The $10.8m US debut for his new fantasy film The Last Witch Hunter is, even unadjusted for inflation, his second-worst result, just behind 2007 sci-fi film Babylon AD; Witch Hunter didn’t do much better overseas, with the top two territories – the UK and Germany – failing to open higher than his last solo lead, 2013’s Riddick. The gravel-chute-throated bruiser returned to the F&F series after big-budget diversions XXX and The Chronicles of Riddick failed him to secure a higher level of stardom in the mid-noughties. Like the latter, The Last Witch Hunter – apparently inspired by Diesel’s own D&D character – is another pricey ($90m) indulgence of the actor’s taste for high fantasy, but there seems to be little broader appetite to follow him into big-canvas imaginative excursions. Pitch Black, which in 2000 encouraged the brooding tyro to flourish inside a tight genre frame, and its second sequel, Riddick, worked better partly because they were much more tightly budgeted ($23m and $38m respectively). It might be an inconvenient truth for Diesel that audiences are so used to seeing him in contemporary settings that, unless he can dramatically up the quality of his passion projects, muscle-car cockpits are now the only place from which he can reliably tear up the box office. The recently announced XXX sequel is probably his best alternative: the original, with $277.4m worldwide, remains his biggest hit outside F&F, but that was nearly 15 years ago.
The last gasp
If low-budget horror hawkers Blumhouse were hoping for a last hurrah with Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension, it’s not working out to plan. The sixth and final instalment has just opened at $8.2m in the States, a low point for the franchise – though that figure has been affected by the decision to release the film on VOD after 17 days. Most major chains refused to carry it, dropping the amount of theatres by 1,200 for the fifth instalment to just 1,600. Paranormal Activity had been declining as a property anyway, the bare-floorboard minimalism of Oren Peli’s 2009, $15,000-budgeted original gradually watered down by more familiar horror-movie tropes; and worldwide grosses dropping by No 5 to under half of the series high point – $207m for No 3. The caveat is that the series remains ultra-profitable, and even this final fling – at $10m the most expensive of the lot – is already in the black. Globally, it’s actually doing quite capably, with Latin American countries setting a string of Paranormal Activity opening highs: Mexico ($2.7m), Brazil ($1.7m), Colombia (517K), Peru (489K). That just emphasises, though, how Blumhouse and distributors Paramount might, by tinkering with the US release window, have missed the chance to go out with a bang (presumably the rationale for the extra spend, but let’s see how the digital release pans out). Hopefully snapping the viewfinder shut on the Paranormal Activity franchise means closure on found-footage horror – the genre desperately needs new blood. Judging by Crimson Peak’s failure last week, it’s not clear where that will come from.
Mid-term reports
Still on top of the global box office after a month is The Martian, its satisfying nuts-and-bolts narrative and chipper spirit giving it true longevity. At $385.2m, it’s about $70m short of Ridley Scott’s previous best, Gladiator, which it should surpass with a 25 November Chinese release to come. To date the 11th highest grossing movie in the US, it’s still ticking along fine there – and is on track to finish close to $200m. Similarly durable, with major markets (Aus, 26 Nov; South Korea, 24 Dec) still ahead of it, and Halloween to stir up further cobwebbed business, is Hotel Transylvania 2 – closing fast on the first film’s $358.4m worldwide. The Intern looks like a dip for Nancy Meyers, the current $155.8m tally the smallest for her directorial career since 1998’s The Parent Trap. But budgeted at around half ($40m) what her high-spec dramedies have cost in the past, it’s actually a decent earner – with an improbable $21m from South Korea. China could cast the deciding vote for the Maze Runner franchise when it opens midweek on 4 November. Scorch Trials – in 11th place globally with $267.7m – is struggling to keep pace with its predecessor’s $340.7m, and risks being completely blown off the YA map when the last Hunger Games opens in just under a month. The third Maze Runner, Death Cure, is due to start filming next February, but you wonder if failing to breach $300m might jeopardise that. Meanwhile, Johnny Depp’s so-called return to form, Boston gangster pic Black Mass, looks outwardly like a certified hit ($75.5m worldwide, in 18th global spot). But a $53m budget puts a big fat question mark over that in a year when distributor Warner are sorely in need of any good news.
Beyond Hollywood
Poorly reviewed Bollywood romcom Shaandaar topped the new non-Hollywood releases this week, in 12th globally with $8m; its box-office crash after a strong opening day will disappoint studio Fox Star, who’ve had a mixed year with Mr X and Bombay Velvet bombing, and Hollywood remake Brothers not lasting the course. Shahid Kapoor and Alia Bhatt star in Shaandaar as a pair of insomniacs who fall for each other, while – sleepwalk romcom stuff, this – organising someone else’s wedding. Reiterating South Korea’s ability to churn out crime thrillers at industrial rate is The Phone, down in 15th on the Rentrak chart with $5m, about a lawyer who is able to call his long-since-dead wife thanks to a magnetic-field anomaly, and then has to uncover her murderer. From debuting writer-director Kim Bong-joo, this one sounds like it could go either way, believability-wise.
The future
Spectre – caught in a debate whether it’s a supreme affirmation of Bondian heritage or a middling, derivative retreat into formula – opens early in the UK today, and Scandinavia at the end of the week, before unloading the 007 dumper truck everywhere else the following frame. Paramount’s addition to the zomcom canon, the $15m-budgeted and apostrophe-challenged Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse, takes on 15 countries including the US; it’s gunning for the teen end of the market in a crowded but not particularly inspiring Halloween field that also includes Crimson Peak, Paranormal Activity: Ghost Hunt, The Last Witch Hunter, Goosebumps and Hotel Transylvania 2. Choice Bollywood release is interesting-looking thriller Main Aur Charles, featuring Randeep Hooda as a devious conman/serial killer apparently based on real-life Indian-Vietnamese murderer Charles Sobhraj, currently in life imprisonment in Nepal.
Top 10 global box office, 23-25 October
1. The Martian, $45.9m from 73 countries. $385.2m cumulative – 56.8% international; 43.2% US
2. Hotel Transylvania 2, $37.7m from 80 countries. $315.8m cum – 53% int; 47% US
3. (New) Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension, $26.2m from 34 territories – 68.7% int; 31.3% US
4. (New) The Last Witch Hunter, $24.2m from 54 territories – 55.3% int; 44.7% US
5. Ant-Man, $22.2m from 3 territories. $493.8m cum – 63.7% int; 36.3% US
6. Goosebumps, $21.3m from 25 territories. $52.9m cum – 17.4% int; 82.6% US
7. Bridge of Spies, $16.7m from 24 territories. $39.7m cum – 17.9% int; 82.1% US
8. Pan, $14.8m from 62 territories. $93.4m cum – 68.1% int; 31.9% US
9. Crimson Peak, $13.4m from 63 territories. $48.9m cum – 54% int; 46% US
10. The Intern, $11.6m from 61 territories. $155.8m cum – 58.5% int; 41.5% US
• Thanks to Rentrak. This week’s figures are based on estimates; all historical figures unadjusted, unless otherwise stated.
