Box Office: 'Aladdin' Nabs Boffo $31 Million Friday, But 'Brightburn' And 'Booksmart' Disappoint

Walt Disney’s Aladdin is well on its way to breaking the studio’s unofficial Memorial Day weekend curse. Save for Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End (a record $153 million Fri-Mon debut) in 2007 and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales (a halfway decent $77 million Fri-Mon debut) in 2017, pretty much every Disney Memorial Day release (Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, Tomorrowland, Alice Through the Looking Glass, Solo: A Star Wars Story) has died a bad death here and/or abroad. Now one decent opening day isn’t a curse lifted, but a $31 million Friday gross, including $7 million in Thursday previews, is a good start for the much-discussed live-action musical/romance.

Walt Disney spent $183 million on a live-action version of Aladdin and, as promised, cast almost every significant role with a Middle Eastern, Asian or Indian actor or actress. They cast Will Smith as the Genie because Robin Williams died five years ago and Disney needed a big star with an equally distinct movie star persona. The film screened for critics and received relatively mixed reviews, with plaudits going to the cast and the production values and demerits directed at the new (and 45% longer) version of the prior screenplay. General audiences saw commercials and trailers for what looked like a good time at the movies, read the reviews and then more-or-less showed up. Occam’s Razor.

As expected, the years of online handwringing (Billy Magnussen is in the movie for about 120 seconds as foppish comic relief) and manufactured controversies (no, Guy Ritchie was never going to cast Tom Hardy as Jafar) didn’t make a damn bit of difference. The Internet laughed at or scream at Will Smith’s Genie, but general audiences (young and old) showed up anyway. The marketing campaign was a bit too coy, at least until the last minute, but the core pitch (“a big-budget live-action version of Aladdin”) was good enough to overcome hesitant marketing. Once reviews confirmed that the movie was halfway decent, with splashy production values and a charismatic cast, audiences showed up accordingly.

As long as the movie was somewhat coherent, delivered on the razzle-dazzle and nostalgia while highlighting a lead romantic duo (Mena Massoud and Naomi Scott) who were charismatic, beautiful and able to generate chemistry and mutual heat, this was merely a matter of hoping enough folks actually wanted to see a live-action Aladdin. Once the reviews, even the pans, assured people that the movie delivered on its core pitch, along with a somewhat rare over-the-top Will Smith movie star turn, the fix was in. So, despite years of proclamations of doom, and yeah this could have gone in a different direction, Walt Disney’s Aladdin may be flirting with a $100 million Fri-Mom Memorial Day weekend.

Aladdin earned 22.5% of its opening day via Thursday previews, which is right in line with the Pirates sequels and X-Men: Days of Future Past. The last several years’ worth of Memorial Day biggies have generally earned multipliers between 2.724x (At World’s End and X-Men: The Last Stand) and 3.33x (Dead Men Tell No Tales). If it plays accordingly, we’re looking at a Fri-Mon debut between $84 million and $103 million. It could theoretically play leggier, like Alice Through the Looking Glass (3.45x in 2016) or Men in Black 3 ($69 million from a $17.6 million opening day for a 3.9x multiplier in 2012), which means a Fri-Mon debut weekend between $107 million and $121 million.

Sony and Screen Gems released Brightburn yesterday to middling results. The James Gunn-produced and David Yarovesky-directed chiller, essentially turning the Superman origin story into a horror movie, earned mixed-positive reviews but didn’t get much in the way of buzz heading into the weekend. As such, the $3 million Friday, including $950,000 in Thursday previews, isn’t a surprise. We can expect a $7.5 million Fri-Sun weekend and a $9 million Fri-Mon debut for the $7 million-budgeted Elizabeth Banks vehicle. This one had the bad luck of ramping up its marketing just as Disney fired Gunn from Guardians 3 over some unearthed tweets. Disney hired him back, but Sony delayed Brightburn from Thanksgiving 2018 to Memorial Day 2019.

That wasn’t fatal, as it’s not like a cheapie like this needed a saturation campaign. Honestly, after the first teaser played well enough online, the overall marketing frankly got kind of quiet. To be fair, Sony may have just spent the bare minimum needed to get a $7 million-budgeted movie into the black (it’ll probably tap out at $20 million domestic). Come what may, this wasn’t the summer counterprogramming event it was presumed to be after that first teaser. That said, the Mark and Brian Gunn-penned movie is a fascinating little deconstruction, examining toxic masculinity through a superhero origin while ironically taking the Superman mythos closer to their roots as a Moses parable. It’s worth a watch.

United Artists Releasing, uh, released Booksmart into 2,505 theaters yesterday. The Olivia Wilde-directed teen comedy, sold (somewhat accurately) as a Superbad for girls, has earned mostly rave reviews and strong buzz going out of its SXSW debut this past April. But when it’s just as easy to for folks to stay home and binge episodes of (the excellent) Pen15 on Hulu, getting audiences into theaters for an R-rated, female-centric future classic like this is no easier than it was with The Do-To List in 2013 or The Edge of Seventeen in 2016. As such, a $2.5 million Friday should lead to a $6.7 million Fri-Sun frame and an $8.1 million Fri-Mon debut weekend. That’s not great.

The marketing was mostly digital, so this won’t be a catastrophe, but the overall low number is still a tragedy for this kind of movie. I know I say this all the time, but if you want more movies like this in theaters, you actually have to see them in theaters. We’ve seen the consequences of moviegoers mostly ignoring nearly all of Fox’s 2018 slate in the relative decimation of the studio in the aftermath of its sale to Disney. Fox2000 is shuttering, the amount of films Fox will release has decreased by half, and Disney is mostly mining them for catalog properties and IP. Once again, vote with your wallet, not with your hashtag.