Demon slays Angels but can’t best One Love, America Drives far Away from Dolls, and Other Box Office News.
It’s a transitional week on the schedule which means a chance for Crunchyroll and Toho to fleece some quick bucks out of the weebs! Almost a year ago to the day, these people leveraged the goodwill banked by Demon Slayer: Mugen Train’s astronomical crossover success – for an anime filler movie (that’s apparently not a filler movie but I still haven’t bothered to start watching the show), anyway – to make both casuals and super-fans pony up cash and watch three episodes of television, two of which had already aired a full year beforehand, on a big screen.
Despite this ostensibly being a terrible deal, going from a proper movie to a compilation so lazy the studios didn’t even edit out the opening and ending credits from each episode, To the Swordsmith Village nonetheless made decent bank against Creed III ($10.1 million and $56 million worldwide) so Toho and Crunchyroll have opted to try it again. Only this time, To the Hashira Training reduces itself down to two episodes of television, one of which first aired eight months ago! What value! And because anime fans are masochists, this gambit has worked yet again! $11.5 million for second place, not quite enough to surpass Bob Marley: One Love (at $13.5 mil) but way closer than it has any right to.
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Weebs of the world! You’re people, too! You have rights! You don’t deserve to be treated like this! If you keep letting them shunt haphazard compilation films into the cinema under the guise of proper films, something they’ve proven they can make, then they’re gonna keep doing it! Hell, at this rate, the next one of these is just gonna be half-an-episode which first aired 45 minutes before release, half-an-episode of the new season, and then 30 minutes of a middle finger JPEG! Rise up! Demand more Mugen Trains!
Elsewhere, we have evidence for both sides of the “state of adult dramas at the cinema” debate. On the “they’re still alive, you just need to target the audience aggressively” side, we have Ordinary Angels, a faith-based true-story drama starring Hilary Swank that blew past all industry expectations to snatch third-place from a collapsing Madame Web with $6.5 million and an “A+” Cinemascore. If you’re wondering how this came to be, it’s by the same production company responsible for Jesus Revolution which was also a surprise hit with long legs at a time when that particular audience was desperate for some (apparently) actual good examples of the widely-maligned genre. Kingdom Story Company got a niche, they’re filling it.
On the “oh God, they’re dying, fuck FUCK” side, meanwhile, we have Drive-Away Dolls, the first official solo outing for Ethan Coen, going back to his Raising Arizona shit but making it GAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYY. And whilst that sounds like my new favourite film, America is full of miserable tasteless bastards so Dolls is an outright bomb, crashing hard into the eighth-place tree with airbags of only $2.4 million to try and save it from death. Probably a good thing Ethan and Joel’s split is already coming to an end.
In just under a decade’s time, this Full List will get a live-action remake by Netflix that looks like total dogshit, pisses off the entire original fanbase, attracts no new audience, and gets cancelled after the first season on a cliff-hanger cos nobody watched it.
US Box Office Results: Friday 16th February 2024 – Sunday 18th February 2024
1] Bob Marley: One Love
$13,500,000 / $71,188,696
Had the opportunity to see All of Us Strangers in a cinema one last time so went for that instead of this cos sometimes you just need a good cry. I’ll get around soon, I promise.
2] Demon Slayer: Kimetsu No Yaiba – To the Hashira Training
$11,575,000 / NEW
Somebody who actually reads these pieces instead of bluffing to my face that I’m not talking to a void week-in-week-out will be in the middle of typing a big keyboard rant about my attitude towards these two recent Demon Slayer “movies.” After all, I was on record just last week praising Fathom’s choice to keep releasing compilation movies of The Chosen for the fans to congregate around; how is that any different to Toho & Crunchyroll doing so with Demon Slayer? To that I have two equally valid answers.
- Answer A] Because unlike The Chosen, this just reeks of brand milking given how unsatisfying and stilted the viewing experience was, and the knowledge that we could in fact have it so much better since Demon Slayer has proven it could do a Mugen Train instead, whereas The Chosen has no equivalent.
- Answer B] It’s not any different and I’m just a giant hypocrite still bitter about being tricked into Swordsmith Village last year cos I didn’t do any research beforehand.
3] Ordinary Angels
$6,500,000 / NEW
This is co-written by Kelly Fremon Craig of The Edge of Seventeen and Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, two of the best teen films of the last decade. …alrighty then.
4] Madame Web
$6,000,000 / $35,445,974
The absolute drizzling shits and, just like with Morbius, in the most coma-inducingly boring manner possible. I fucking wish the act of watching this was as much of a delirious car-wreck as it might read on-paper. If Sony’s gonna try and burn down its own home for the insurance money, the very least it could do is make that self-immolation entertaining.
5] Migration
$3,000,000 / $120,445,885
Seeing this in the dead-zone between filing and publishing, so you’ll have to wait until next week for the hot goss. Can Migration cause me to feel something after my Zone of Interest rewatch leaves me emotionally vacant? Given it’s an Illumination joint, likely not.
6] Argylle
$2,800,000 / $41,691,585
I really do think that, in retrospect, the first Kingsman broke something in Matthew Vaughn’s brain. I cannot recall the last time a previously solid director tanked so hard so immediately after their biggest hit.
7] Wonka
$2,535,171 / $214,547,000
Travel back to the far-flung days of 2010 when people were first calling the Marvel Cinematic Universe “cooked,” “OVER,” “unalived,” and other spurious synonyms for failing with the latest entry in Titan Books’ lavish The Art of Marvel Studios series, dedicated to difficult second album Iron Man 2! Amy Walker can give you a heads up on what to expect.
8] Drive-Away Dolls
$2,400,000 / NEW
Look, I don’t care if it’s apparently a bit of a mess/underwhelming. It’s a Coen Brother, it’s a crime comedy, it’s about lesbians, it gives Geraldine Viswanathan a starring role! This thing is made for me! How very fucking dare Universal force me to wait another three weeks before releasing it here in the UK!
9] The Beekeeper
$1,962,567 / $63,145,000
Thank God, Christopher Nolan finally got his BAFTA. If he failed this time, I was afraid he’d junk it all in and just make generic Jason Statham vehicles for the rest of his days… which, come to think of it, actually sounds like it would rule. Get the man on the phone, stat! He loves Fast & Furious, I know he’d be all for this prospect!
10] The Chosen: S4 Episodes 4 – 6
$1,825,115 / $7,899,127
We’re trying some new things with Set The Tape this year. Some new voices, some more freeform pieces than we’ve posted in recent times. Hopefully you’ll enjoy them, like this one from Dave Hodder about being a perpetual rage quitter in gaming!
Dropped out: Anyone But You, Lisa Frankenstein, Land of Bad