With most of the major summer releases behind us, is there anything left you’re looking forward to?

Box office roundup

It’s the middle of summer, everyone is on vacation, Matt included which is why you get my hideous face doing the box office recap. With most of the major summer blockbusters behind us, we are now in that weird part summer where studios release more risky ventures that still have the potential for wide appeal. While most of these releases are stinkers, there’s gold to be had in these hills, you just need to know where to look.

Gold this week came from Denzel Washington and Antoine Fuqua reuniting once again for The Equalizer 2, which managed to edge out the sequel no one asked for Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again by a mere 1.5 million dollars. Coming in at 35.8 million dollars, The Equalizer 2 is the lowest premiere to top the box office this summer but still managed to outperform the original’s debut. Mamma Mia 2 ABBA Boogaloo meanwhile came in under budget at 34.4 million which begs the question, why was this movie made?

Ant-Man and the Wasp continued its sharp decline with another 49% drop this week while Hotel Transylvania 3 proves once again that if you make a kids movie, you are essentially printing money by bringing its total worldwide box office over 200 million dollars. Unfriended: Dark Web also opened this week to what one would think is a disappointing 3.5 million take, but when the movie only costs 1 million dollars to make then you are sitting pretty with some profits.

This past weeks offering is a nice preview of what we have to look forward to for the rest of the summer. Outside of Mission: Impossible – Fallout which opens this week, and The Meg in August, the rest of the summer releases are mostly smaller budget action-comedies with some horror movies starting to pop up ahead of the usual fall glut. There are also a few independent movies that have a better chance to appeal to a wider audience coming out but even those don’t look overly interesting. Outside of Christopher Robin, I think the best of the summer is behind us, but what about you? Is there anything you’re looking forward to for the rest of the summer or have you packed it in?

1. The Equalizer 2 – $35,825,000
2. Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again! – $34,380,000
3. Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation – $23,150,000
4. Ant-Man and the Wasp – $16,126,000
5. Incredibles 2 – $11,520,000
6. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom – $11,005,000
7. Skyscraper – $10,960,000
8. The First Purge – $4,980,000
9. Unfriended: Dark Web – $3,495,000
10. Sorry to Bother You – $2,823,000