It was a good time, unknown time for Ethan Hawke this weekend at the box office.
Hawke wears a mask and scares people in “Black Phone 2,” which topped the list with $26.5 million. You won’t see it, I won’t see it, but horror fans did, and that’s the point. My friend, Perri Nemiroff from the website Collider, saw it, and she loved it. So there.
“Black Phone 2” pays the bills so Hawke can do high quality Richard Linklater films like “Boyhood” and his trilogy with Julie Delpy. Their “Blue Moon” is the opposite end of the spectrum from “Black Phone 2.” Just in limited release this week (the actual numbers got screwed up), “Blue Moon” is a must-see film for people who don’t want to be frightened but love cinema.
It’s a whiff for a bunch of other stars including Julia Roberts, Jennifer Lopez, and Dwayne The Rock Johnson.
Roberts stars in “After the Hunt,” which made $1.55 million and heads off to Amazon Prime soon. Roberts has not made an enjoyable “Julia Roberts” type movie now in more than a dozen years. New audiences would have to work hard to find “Pretty Woman” or “My Best Friend’s Wedding” or even “Erin Brockovich.”
“The Smashing Machine” starring Johnson will wrap up its short run with about $12 million tops. No one wanted to see it, and no one has seen it. Strangely enough, director Benny Safdie and Johnson are undeterred by this calamity and are making another movie together. How do they find investors?
“Kiss of the Spider Woman” vanished entirely over the weekend. On Friday, Roadkill Attractions reported a total of $1.3 million over an 8 day period. Neverthless– and this was weird — Lopez was still doing major press this week, like Howard Stern’s radio show. Did no one tell her this wouldn’t help? Maybe she just likes publicity for no purpose. “Spider Woman” will lose most of its theaters this coming Friday, and head off to video on demand for 20 bucks or so.
Keanu Reeves also had a rough ride over the weekend. His “Good Fortune” crumbled like a fortune cookie with $6.2 million. Seth Rogen and Aziz Ansari are involved, too. Forgettable airplane stuff. Keanu remains on Broadway in “Waiting for Godot,” a mixed bag but a heroic effort.
Still doing very well: “One Battle After Another” and “Roofman,” each proof that good movies can make money if the audience approves and tells their friends. Whew! What an old fashioned concept!
