


“Spider-Man: Brand New Day” is still making money well into the dog days of August, pulling in another $35 million a month after its release. Go figure.
The past-exhausted “Insidious” franchise’s sixth installment is doing a modestly robust (by horror standards) $23 million on its opening weekend.
And Jason Statham’s venerable action career winds down a bit — and then some — with the bloody-minded shoot-your-way-off-a-cargo-ship thriller “Mutiny,” which deadline.com is figuring will pull in $8 million or so.
The cash take of each of these is impressive enough to make one wonder if Hollywood no longer can regard late August as a dumping ground of movies they can’t see spending a lot on marketing, movies with limited audience prospects and no potential awards season buzz. Ridley Scott’s latest, “The Dog Stars,” opens next weekend, after all.
But “Mutiny” isn’t on track to sell even a million tickets. “Insidious: Out of the Further,” will sell only a couple of million. Neither of them woke the critics up.
Don’t let Trumpflation fool you. These aren’t hits any more than Paramount’s low-ceiling “Paw Patrol: The Dino Movie” (just over $9 million on its second weekend, good enough for fourth place) is.
“The Odyssey” has drawn a crowd all through the second half of the summer, pulling in some $18 million this weekend as it lands in third place.
“The End of Oak Street” may hit $8 million, falling off over 60% from its opening weekend. It may lose fifth place to “Mutiny.” Figure sixth place for that one, maybe fifth if “Mutiny” falters.
The dreadfully unfunny “Spa Weekend” isn’t making much noise, and a fairy tale starring Andrew Garfield, “The Magic Far-Away Tree,” isn’t expected to do more than a couple of million either. And wider releases of “Tony,” about hipster chef, writer and rambler Anthony Bourdain, the Gillian Anderson-starring “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma” and “It Ends” may crack the top ten on a late summer weekend where most of the blockbusters have run their course.
“Spider-Man” wins the summer, with some $840 million in the bank by midnight Sunday. “The Odyssey,” in the mid $530s by Sunday, will come in second. “Toy Story 5” (in the $480 range) will take third.
But we’ll have to wait and see who strains to get in this week’s second five on this late August weekend, and who drops out of the top ten. Check back in as I’ll be updating these figures as the weekend progresses.
