Reserved for the daily pile of confusion, various media are calling the opening weekend box office take for “Men in Black 3” a success.
Newsflash: it was not, at least as far as domestic dollars are concerned.
En route to a four-day, holiday weekend bow in the $70 million territory, “MIB 3” only earned $55 million in its first three days of release. Though enough to claim victory this weekend, the total is not enough to help the film shake a label of disappointment.
If the $70 million forecast holds up, the film will miss pre-weekend projections by a whopping $10 million. And those projections were already quite underwhelming. While the argument can be made that there was no real “need” for another “Men in Black” movie and that the film did not benefit from the same hype as the hot summer superhero trifecta (“Avengers,” “Spider-Man” and “Dark Knight Rises”), it was still a massively-budgeted summer franchise blockbuster starring Will Smith.
It did not perform as such.
True, Smith has never been the box office draw many believe he is, and this will, in fact, be the best opening weekend performance for an “MIB” film. But given the anticipation that should have developed during Smith’s hiatus from tentpole films and the lack of competition from anything not named “The Avengers,” a $75 million three-day-total and $100 million four-day tally should not have been unreasonable.
“The Avengers” landed in second on $37.0 million to reach the $500 million domestic milestone, while last week’s flop “Battleship” fell a whopping 58% to $10.8 million for third. “The Dictator” ($9.6 million) landed in fourth, ahead of disappointing new release “Chernobyl Diaries,” which was good for only $8 million.