Box office: “Independence Day: Resurgence” did less well than predicted over the weekend. The number looks like it’s $41.6 million. Fox was hoping for at least $43 million. The settled number may be even lower when the figures come in on Monday. The movie cost $200 million. Everyone involved is praying the Chinese like it anyway!
Just to give some idea of how the sequel really crashed: twenty years ago the original film had a five day opening weekend over July 4th weekend. But just the Friday- Sunday part came to $241 million. In 2016 dollars, that’s $371,351,954.39.
So that’s a frightening statistic. Fox will be fine, with Stacey Snider taking over and a bunch of good looking films including Warren Beatty’s “Rules Don’t Apply” and Jon Hamm in “Keeping Up with the Joneses.” Plus, Fox Searchlight has a potential Oscar winner with “The Birth of A Nation” this fall.
As for “IDR,” failure doesn’t preclude Roland Emmerich from making more potential blockbuster losers. His next one is called “Moonscape,” for Universal, plus he has an “ID” 3 on his mind, a movie version of “Stargate,” and so on. The man who made the ridiculous “2012” and “The Day After Tomorrow” will just keep going, no matter what. Nothing succeeds like excess!
