A fourth go-round for the “Expendables,” with most of the all-star buzz/all-star cast of aging action star lineup checked out since the last film in that opening trilogy, is turning out to be have been a bad idea.
Inflation-jacked ticket prices or not, a poor Thursday night (I saw it with maybe 5 people in the theater) and feeble Friday of $3.3 point to a $9 million opening weekend, tops, which Deadline.com notes is the worst ever for the franchise.
Terrible reviews, far worse than the original film and pretty much bad across the board, didn’t help.
Stallone doesn’t have anything else going on, to speak of, but Jason Statham has better things to do than ride this dead horse until he’s Sly’s age. No Terry Crews, newer, lower wattage co-stars gave fans no excuse to turn up just to see the Lionsgate spectacle.
“Nun II” will clear $7 million, a bad movie that keeps making money.
“A Haunting in Venice” deserved better than a half-decent opening and 60% drop second weekend. The lack of a more star-studded supporting cast may give its older audience an excuse to not bother — it might make $6. Then again, it traditionally takes older audiences longer to get around to movies aimed at them. It’s good. Maybe they’ll get the word. We’ll see.
The final Denzel turn as “The Equalizer” isn’t having that problem, clearing $4.5, $81 all-in by midnight Sunday. It probably won’t reach $100, but it’ll end up close.
And “Barbie” is getting a lot of IMAX screens and its $3.5 million take will be enough to shove the worst “Big Fat Greek Wedding” movie out of the top five.
I’ll update this as more data comes in. The released and abandoned “Dumb Money” and other more titles have my interest as well.

