In what seems like the most definitive proof yet that you shouldn’t spend untold millions of dollars making a movie exclusively for the people who remember that there was an Expendables 3 (it came out in 2014 and Kelsey Grammer was in it???), Expend4bles—pronounced ecks-pen-d-for-bulls—opened to just $8.3 million. As we noted earlier this weekend, that wasn’t enough to beat The Nun II, which actually came out just ahead of Expend4bles by $100,000 in its third week in U.S. theaters. The horror sequel spin-off has a nice $69 million total.
Finishing the top five in the U.S. this weekend are A Haunting In Venice, which doesn’t seem to have the surprising box office oomph of its predecessors in that series (it only has $25 million in its second week), The Equalizer 3 (quietly pulling in $80 million in four weeks), and—holy shit—Barbie (still making money after 10 weeks in theaters).
In the bottom half of the top 10 we have My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3, horror newcomer It Lives Inside, Dumb Money (which jumped up a thousand percent from its debut at number 19 thanks to a bigger rollout, but that only amounts to $2.5 million in week two), Blue Beetle, and Barbie’s friend Oppenheimer. All told, this was indeed the worst box office weekend of the year, and you have to go way back to February 12 to see anything remotely close to this. Magic Mike’s Last Dance was the top movie, but Avatar: The Way Of Water in its ninth week and the 25th-anniversary rerelease of Titanic were pretty close to it.
Anyway, this probably means that the all-female ExpendaBelles movie is never gonna happen, huh? Bummer. Here’s the top 10 again as a list, from Box Office Mojo.
- The Nun II
- Expend4bles
- A Haunting In Venice
- The Equalizer 3
- Barbie
- My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3
- It Lives Inside
- Dumb Money
- Blue Beetle
- Oppenheimer