Box Office: ‘Collateral Beauty’ Gives Will Smith His Worst Friday Gross Ever
On this weekend last year, Star Wars: The Force Awakens blasted its way to the top of the opening weekend record books with a $247.9 million debut weekend. But it did not slay all comers. Two new wide releases, Sisters and Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip, pulled off solid over/under $14m+ debut weekends right alongside the return of the Jedi. And since Rogue One is going to make a lot less this weekend, you can’t blame the rather weak performance of Collateral Damage on the Star Wars movie.
The only new wide release on Friday was Collateral Beauty. The Warner Bros./Time Warner Inc. release, courtesy of Village Roadshow and New Line Cinema, opened with $2.4 million yesterday. That is the single worst Friday for a wide release Will Smith vehicle ever, above only his few platform efforts like Where the Day Takes You and Six Degrees of Separation well before he was a movie star. The likely $7m debut will be the worst opening weekend ever for a Smith movie, cameo or star vehicle, in any sort of wide release.
Okay, this wasn’t a big sci-fi action comedy spectacular, but this star-driven holiday melodrama is going to have to count on word-of-mouth (questionable if audiences agree with the critical community) and Christmas/New Year’s legs (challenging with the deluge of new releases coming down the pike in the next week) if it wants any hope of survival. Think of it as a Christmas miracle. And considering I kinda liked the crazy-wacky original melodrama, I’m holding out hope.
Director David Frankel and writer Allan Loeb’s melodrama stars not just Will Smith (as an advertising executive crumbling over the death of his young child) but also…
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