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Box office hits and misses: ‘Wonder Woman’ buries ‘The Mummy’ with heroic second week

Not even Tom Cruise battling one of the most famous movie monsters of all time was enough to slow the momentum of Wonder Woman, which easily topped new release The Mummy over the weekend.

Director Patty Jenkins’ cinematic superhero story added another $57.1 million to its impressive domestic earnings so far, dropping a mere 45 percent from its opening weekend. The film — which earned overwhelmingly positive reviews from professional critics and general audiences — earned more in its second week than fellow Warner Bros. Pictures releases Suicide Squad and Batman V. Superman: Dawn of Justice, putting it in good position to rake in quite a bit more money in the weeks to come.

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The success of Wonder Woman appears to have come at the expense of The Mummy, though.

# Title Weekend U.S. Total Worldwide Total
1. Wonder Woman $57.1M $205M $435.2M
2. The Mummy $32.2M $32.2M $174M
3. Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie $12.3M $44.5M $45.4M
4. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales $10.7M $135.8M $528.7M
5. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 $6.2M $366.3M $828.2M
6. It Comes At Night $6M $6M $6M
7. Baywatch $4.6M $51M $86M
8. Megan Leavey $3.7M $3.7M $3.7M
9. Alien: Covenant $1.8M $71.2M $178.7M
10. Everything, Everything $1.6M $31.7M $31.7M

The first film in Universal Pictures’ “Dark Universe” of interconnected monster movies, The Mummy paired negative reviews with a less-than-stellar opening weekend. The film’s $32.2 million premiere was actually lower than the opening weekends of any of the films in the earlier trilogy of The Mummy movies that starred Brendan Fraser or the spinoff from that trilogy — with 2008’s The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor debuting to $40.4 million and 2002’s The Scorpion King opening to $36 million.

Still, all is not lost for The Mummy, as the film had a good premiere outside the U.S., earning more than $140 million internationally. With that kind of support overseas, the film could indeed join the list of recent projects that weathered poor performance in the U.S. with excellent worldwide box-office numbers.

The weekend’s only other new releases — the thriller It Comes At Night and real-world war drama Megan Leavey — both failed to convert positive reviews to ticket sales. The two films were warmly received by critics and audiences, but still couldn’t catch a break at the box office with $6 million and $3.7 million opening weekends, respectively.

This upcoming weekend will likely be a family-friendly win, with Disney and Pixar’s Cars 3 hitting theaters and bringing the now-customary surge of all-ages audiences. How that will affect Wonder Woman remains to be seen, though.

The other films premiering this weekend include the raunchy, bachelorette-party comedy Rough Night with Scarlett Johansson, the Tupac Shakur documentary All Eyez On Me, the shark thriller 47 Meters Down, and the quirky thriller from Jurassic World director Colin Trevorrow, The Book of Henry.

Rick Marshall
A veteran journalist with more than two decades of experience covering local and national news, arts and entertainment, and…
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