Oh, hey, it’s the worst box office weekend of the year (so far)
The Expend4bles are leading the retreat with one of the worst openings of Sylvester Stallone's career
Aux News Expend4bles
The summer of Barbenheimer is now well and truly over, it seems, as box office numbers coming out today reveal that we’re currently sitting in the midst of the single worst box office weekend of the year—at least so far. The primary culprit? Sylvester Stallone’s Expend4bles, which is gearing up for an incredibly tepid $8 million opening. It is, in fact, bad enough that the movie is basically neck-and-neck with The Nun II, which has been out for three weeks at this point—so little is the audience’s desire to see Sly and his boys get busy doing [remember to look up whatever the dumbass plot of Th4 Ex4endables is and insert a reference to it here].
And while this is certainly the worst opening an Expendables movie has ever received—with the franchise steadily dropping with each installment, from the relative heights of the first movie’s $35 million initial weekend—we feel moved to note that it is by no means the worst opening of Stallone’s career. (Although, if you take, say, Rhinestone, at $5.5 million, or Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot, $7.1 million, and adjust them for inflation, 4xpendables lags pretty far behind both infamous flops.) There’s a lot of Bullet To The Head/Escape Plan/Grudge Match material over the last 20 years, is all we’re saying, although this latest result does suggest that one of Stallone’s most reliable latter-day tentpoles is no longer keeping the tent up off the ground.
And, sure, you could put at least some of the blame for the film’s poor performance on the ways the ongoing strikes have curtailed promotional efforts for the movie—but then you’re living in a reality where millions of dollars rest on the sight of Sylvester Stallone looking at Jason Statham and Tony Jaa and ruefully shaking his head about these “knuckleheads,” which is depressing in and of itself. (Also, per Deadline, it’s not like movies aren’t opening considerably better right now despite the same handicaps, including Saw X, which is expected to bring in roughly $20 million next week.)
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The Expend4bles are leading the retreat with one of the worst openings of Sylvester Stallone’s career
Worse than Rocky VII: Adrian’s Revenge?
I was never a follower of the Rocky franchise, so when I first saw that episode I had no idea ‘Adrian’s Revenge’ wasn’t a real film.
who asked for this to be made to begin with? did they go to see it?
I hope the Expendfourbles having such a shitty opening leads to Stallone’s career dying, something which should have happened more than forty years and countless bad movies ago.
Not a Demolition Man fan?
Cliffhanger is a lot of fun.
Or a Cop Land fan?But yes, you have to dig through a lot of rubbish to find good movies in his résumé.
Cop Land is one of my biggest movie surprises. I thought it was going to be aggressively mediocre and it’s actually very good.
And more timely than ever.
It got pretty uniformly solid reviews at the time but didn’t seem to generate much audience interest. I didn’t see it until later and it’s definitely better than its box office would suggest.
Boo hoo.
Stallone’s career is littered with flops, but he always bounces back. Which honestly is something I can respect.This will kill the Expendables franchise (thank God) but Sly is too big a name for this t0 take him down with it. Besides, his TV series Tulsa King was one of the highest rated shows of 2022, so he’s got a future there if nowhere else.
I feel like the Expendables franchise was already basically dead and basically only exists because Stallone thinks it’d be cool to do another.All this is to say that until Stallone croaks, I think Expendables 5 is still a possibility.
“It ain’t about how hard you can smash the box-office – it’s about how hard you can flop and keep moving forward”.
lol bud if it hasn’t happened in 40+ years i think you’ve gotta just work with the reality he’s gonna be fine. this will not have any effect on stallone’s career.
Stallone is 77 years old. I don’t think we have to worry about seeing him in that many more movies.
Stallone’s most reliable latter-day tentpoles is no longer keeping the tent up off the ground.Don’t say it, people. It’s too obvious.
Expend Four Bulls?
That was a much better movie…so I hear.
Remember when they would list the top 10 when they wrote these articles?Maybe they’re saving it for a Tuesday morning slide show?
“See you next Tuesday”-The AV Club
I think they usually do the top ten on Sunday or Monday. But I do get annoyed that they don’t list the gross of each movie in those!!!
I’m more fascinated by the expectation that Saw X is projected to bring in $20MM. What’s the methodology here??
the deadline review all but outright accuses the expen4ables of re-using footage from the meg 2 and i have to wonder.
Coming soon: The ExM3gdable5
“Meet the newest member of our team.”*giant prehistoric shark busts through wall*“’sup?”
Stallone’s already in these movies though
it sounds honestly close. like he fights the exact same cgi monster. i am not going to pay for a ticket to expendables 4 to find out but i assume this will be on digital in 10 days.
BoxOfficeMojo reminds me that over the utterly dismal weekends of April 26-28 and May 3-5, 1991, the Stallone-led film Oscar topped the box office with $5.1 million and $4.2 million, respectively. (It went on to gross $23.6 million total, not even enough to break the top 50 films of the year.) And both of those weekend hauls would top $8 million if adjusted for today’s dollars ($1 in 1991 ~ $2.25 in 2023.)
What did you expect? The combined age of this group is 5000 years old.
[remember to look up whatever the dumbass plot of Th4 Ex4endables is and insert a reference to it here].
Oh, it’s pretty dumb. What’s funny is that despite all the advertising and media coverage of the movie revolving around Stallone, his character actually dies five minutes into the movie. The whole thing is a vehicle to get Jason Statham over as the new Main Expendable by having him replace and avenge Stallone as leader. Except I guess the studio didn’t really have that much faith in Jason despite building the whole movie around him, because at the very end Stallone shows up alive anyway and saves Statham from the bad guy. All this work to set things up for sequels which will thankfully never be made.Anyway, between this and Indiana Jones and Michael Keaton’s Batman 3 Guest Starring The Flash all bombing, hopefully we can finally do away with the post-Maverick notion that what audiences want is nostalgia porn starring faded action heroes from the 80’s. What we want is girl movies where everything is pink, combined with movies about tortured scientists.
The thing about Maverick, though is that they really made an effort, especially the technical side of things including real planes as much as possible. A lot of this other nostalgia bait has been constructed a little less solidly.
Like, on its own, Maverick is a genuinely good – and sincere – movie. It works just as Maverick, not Top Gun: Maverick. There rib-nudging references done purely for references, and there’s no cowardly hiding behind winking irony. Hell, the callbacks to the first are there – but not just for the sake of being there to give you something to go “OOOOH! I GOT THAT!” They actually really help the plot (like how the fuck is Maverick still in the Navy, and flying, despite being constantly disciplined, or how the real star of the movie can turn up at the end). And fuck, it’s actually got one of the best, most realistic love plotlines in a Hollywood movie, one that actually breaks a lot of gender roles which I found fantastic.
What they should have learned from Maverick is that your movie first and foremost has to stand on its own as a good product. That movie was 10x better than I had any expectations of it being.
The fact that more people aren’t seeing Bottoms is a travesty to cinema.