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Summer movies 2017: Winners and losers

Gal Gadot led ‘Wonder Woman’ to roaring summer success; Idris Elba couldn’t find box office glory in ‘The Dark Tower’

It’s been a chilly summer for the movie business. By August, the U.S. box office was reporting historic lows, with several media outlets looking back to the dark days following the September 2001 terror attacks to find comparable numbers. Blame streaming media, franchise fatigue, or a lack of decent August options, but U.S. movie-ticket sales are approaching a 25-year low. And yet, there were bright spots: The international box office is up more than 3 percent, the box office was buoyed by some surprise hits (including Dunkirk, Girls Trip, and Baby Driver), and Wonder Woman would be considered a runaway smash in any year. Here, we assess summer 2017’s box office winners and losers.

WINNER: The Continuing Reign of Wonder Woman Wonder Woman is the No. 1 film of the summer, but that’s not all it is. It’s now the third-highest-grossing Warner Bros. release ever (after The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises), the seventh highest-grossing superhero movie ever, and the highest-grossing film of all time by a female director (congrats, Patty Jenkins). The film opened on June 2 and was still tallying million-dollar weekends at the end of August; as of today, the mighty Amazon’s origin story has earned $406.8 mil domestically.

LOSER: Failure-to-Launch Franchises In these strange times, every big-budget film must contain the seed of a film universe, from which to mine an endless supply of sequels and spin-offs. Except it doesn’t always work. The Dark Tower ($46 mil), Valerian ($40 mil), Baywatch ($58 mil), and King Arthur: Legend of the Sword ($39 mil) were all potential franchises turned flops. The exception is The Mummy ($80 mil), a U.S. box-office disappointment that hasn’t dissuaded Universal from moving forward with its Dark Universe monster franchise. Bride of Frankenstein is slated for February 2019.

Christopher Nolan directs ‘Dunkirk’

WINNER: Dunkirk Christopher Nolan’s breathtaking World War II drama took off despite plenty of risks. Not only is Dunkirk a major departure from its director’s signature genre films like The Dark Knight and Inception, it’s the polar opposite of a popcorn flick. It could easily have drowned in a sea of animation and superhero films, forgotten by the start of Oscar season. Instead, Dunkirk was an unexpected sensation, taking in $174 mil so far and holding the No. 1 spot at the box office for two consecutive weeks.

LOSER: Detroit The latest true-to-life thriller from director Kathryn Bigelow and writer Mark Boal (The Hurt Locker, Zero Dark Thirty) took on the timely subject matter of police brutality in a black urban neighborhood. Perhaps it was too timely for escapism-seeking summer audiences. The film has brought in just $16 mil, despite opening in more theaters than Zero Dark Thirty (which grossed $95 mil).

WINNER: Girls Trip R-rated studio comedies had it rough this year, until Queen Latifah, Jada Pinkett Smith, Regina Hall, and breakout star Tiffany Haddish came to the rescue. Girls Trip ($109 mil) is a milestone in female ensemble comedy: the film opened bigger than Bridesmaids, is selling more tickets per week than Bad Moms, and stands as the only live-action comedy to pass the $100 million mark so far in 2017.

LOSER: Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets This ambitious sci-fi dazzler from director Luc Besson was far more expensive than his 2014 film Lucy — and with just under $40 million in receipts, it made significantly less money. The film did better overseas, particularly in China and Besson’s native France, but still hasn’t recouped its hefty production budget (estimated at $180 mil).

WINNER: Our Minion Overlords Who would have guessed that those anthropomorphized Twinkies in Gru’s basement would become one of America’s most popular exports? Thanks to the massive $975 million worldwide box office of Despicable Me 3 ($255 mil of that in the U.S.), Illumination’s four-film franchise (including three Despicable Me films and Minions) has stolen Shrek’s title as the highest-grossing animated franchise of all time worldwide.��

Will Ferrell in ‘The House’ (Photo: Warner Bros./YouTube)

LOSER: The House Though The House was stacked with beloved stars like Will Ferrell and Amy Poehler, this comedy about parents who turn their home into an illegal casino proved to be one of summer’s worst bets, taking in $25 mil against a $40 mil budget.

WINNER: Big-Screen Events Why should people go out to the movies when they can stream them at home? That question has the industry doing some heavy soul-searching — but one clear draw in summer 2017 were movies that felt like events. Dunkirk was promoted as a film that needed to be seen on the big screen, and sure enough, people came. Wonder Woman’s end-of-summer IMAX re-release boosted the film’s already robust numbers. And one of August’s biggest audience draws in theaters was an actual live sporting event: the Floyd Mayweather vs. Conor McGregor boxing match on August 26 brought in enough money ($2.6 mil) to crack that weekend’s box office top 10.

LOSER: Colin Trevorrow Between its meager $4 mil box office take and the embarrassingly bad reviews, Trevorrow’s original drama The Book of Henry put the director’s reputation on the line — to the point where fans wondered if he would keep his Star Wars: Episode IX job. So far, the Force is still with him.

WINNER: Returning Marvel Heroes They don’t call him amazing for nothing. Spider-Man: Homecoming marked the character’s third franchise reboot in 15 years, yet Spidey came out swinging, earning $320 mil at home and $418 mil internationally. The Guardians of the Galaxy also had a stellar season, with May’s Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 drawing in summer audiences to the tune of $389 mil (plus $473 mil internationally).

LOSER: Sequels to the Point of Exhaustion Diminishing returns were the name of the game for many once-reliable summer franchises back this year for at least their third time. The fifth Pirates of the Caribbean ($172 mil) and Transformers films ($130 mil), the third Cars movie ($149 mil), and the eighth Alien ($74 mil) all came in below projections — though Despicable Me 3 ($254 mil) and Spider-Man: Homecoming ($318 mil) bucked the trend.

Edgar Wright arrives ahead of the ‘Baby Driver’ Australian Premiere in Sydney on July 12, 2017 (Photo: Brendon Thorne/Getty Images)

WINNER: Edgar Wright A reliable creator of cult favorite comedies like Scott Pilgrim vs. the World and Hot Fuzz, British writer-director Wright had never had a major box-office hit in the U.S. — until now. Wright’s high-speed, music-driven crime film Baby Driver has made $104 mil domestically, nearly quadrupling the box office of his previous film, The World’s End.  

LOSER: Logan Lucky Director Steven Soderbergh emerged from his previously announced retirement to make this racecar heist flick, starring Daniel Craig, Channing Tatum, Adam Driver, Katherine Waterston, and Riley Keough. Alas, Soderbergh’s ambitious scheme to market the film on a shoestring backfired; Logan Lucky received rave reviews but has earned only $16.5 mil.

WINNER: Annabelle: Creation Insiders who never expected 2013’s The Conjuring to become a major horror franchise were in for another shock in summer 2017. The fourth installment, an origin story starring the namesake creepy doll, opened at No. 1 and has generated $81 mil on a $15 mil budget, plus $138 mil overseas.

LOSER: Open Road Films Still smarting from April’s huge box-office fail with Armenian genocide drama The Promise, Open Road was no doubt counting on a rebound with the animated The Nut Job 2: Nutty by Nature. Instead, the abysmally reviewed sequel chalked up the worst opening ever for a film playing in 4,000 theaters. So far it’s made $23.5 mil against a $40 mil budget.

WINNER: Lionsgate The studio behind The Hunger Games took an anti-tentpole approach to summer, stocking its lineup with smaller-budgeted films — and It paid off. The limited-release romantic comedy The Big Sick ($39 mil), the Tupac Shakur biopic All Eyez on Me ($45 mil), and the Ryan Reynolds–Samuel L. Jackson action-comedy The Hitman’s Bodyguard ($44 mil) all had strong summers. Lionsgate’s one stumble was the under-performing memoir adaptation The Glass Castle ($13 mil).

LOSER: Transformers: The Last Knight The fifth Transformers movie showed that the power may be draining out of Michael Bay’s giant robots, beloved by audiences and mocked by critics for a decade. The Last Knight brought in the lowest box office of the five films, making $130 mil domestically on a $217 mil budget. A substantial foreign box office ($473 mil) made the movie profitable, but it’s still a steep decline from the previous installment, Age of Extinction (which made over $1 billion worldwide in 2014).

’47 Meters Down’ (Photo: Entertainment Studios/YouTube)

WINNER: 47 Meters Down Like last summer’s The Shallows, this shark-based thriller chomped enough money to swim ahead of its low production costs. With a $44 million gross, 47 Meters Down proved that the Jaws formula still works more than 40 years later: summer audiences flock to a beach vacation gone terrifyingly wrong.

LOSER: Netflix’s Blockbuster Ambitions The emergence of Netflix as a movie studio has generated significant controversy in Hollywood this year, with detractors like James Cameron and Christopher Nolan expressing concern that streaming media will kill the moviegoing experience. But it didn’t happen this summer. Though Netflix released some excellent films, including Bong Joon-ho’s critically acclaimed Okja, none generated the kind of pop-culture buzz Netflix has achieved with original TV series like Stranger Things. But don’t count them out; upcoming Netflix films include the Will Smith fantasy-noir Bright and Martin Scorsese’s star-packed gangster film The Irishman.

WINNER: Atomic Blonde This low-budget, super-violent spy thriller faced stiff competition at the box office, but managed to register a stronger opening weekend — and with $49 million, bigger total box office receipts — than director David Leitch’s previous bloodbath John Wick. Will this one get a sequel too? Charlize Theron might want to keep those shades handy.

WINNER: Matt Reeves War for the Planet of the Apes made a respectable $143 mil domestically and $216 mil internationally. Though it was actually the least profitable installment of the reboot trilogy, it was also the best-reviewed, positioning director Matt Reeves for a bright post-Apes future — beginning with plum DC assignment, The Batman.

LOSER: Popcorn Sales Movie theater owners no doubt bore the brunt of this sluggish movie season. According to The Hollywood Reporter, summer box-office revenue in North America is down 16% over last year, and will fail to clear $4 billion for the first time since 2006. Movie buffs might want to start buying extra boxes of Junior Mints to support their local cinema.

Hollywood’s big summer movies were all filmed elsewhere:

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'Girls Trip' Breakout Tiffany Haddish Shares Grapefruit Tricks and Creative Ex Revenge Ideas (An R-Rated Q&A)

Tiffany Haddish in ‘Girls Trip’ (Photo: Universal)

In a rough year for studio comedies, Girls Trip brings some welcome relief, delivering major laughs, a $30 million opening weekend, and a breakout star. Stand-up comedian Tiffany Haddish plays Dina, the loose cannon in a group of now-older college friends (the others being Regina Hall, Queen Latifah, and Jada Pinkett Smith) who reunite for a trip to New Orleans. It’s a terrific ensemble but Haddish effortlessly steals every scene, including one moment — a sex-act demonstration involving a grapefruit and a banana — that seems destined to rank with the hair-gel gag in There’s Something About Mary and the diarrhea scene in Bridesmaids as an R-rated comedy milestone.

The outrageous comedy of Girls Trip is grounded in the characters’ believable and complicated friendship, and Haddish brings layers of childlike sweetness and hard-won loyalty to Dina’s raunchy persona. Though she’s appeared in other films (notably 2016’s Key and Peele vehicle Keanu), Haddish is best known for her TV work, including The Carmichael Show, Real Husbands of Hollywood, and VH1’s Hip-Hop Squares. Now, Girls Trip is taking Haddish to a new level of visibility, and when Yahoo Movies caught up with her, she was excitedly preparing for her first appearance on a late-night talk show (Jimmy Kimmel Live, where she slayed with a story about taking Jada and Will Smith on a New Orleans swamp tour). In a freewheeling conversation, Haddish talked to Yahoo Movies about her favorite improvised Girls Trip scene, trading comedy tips with Queen Latifah, and of course, the challenge of “grapefruiting.” [Note: Interview contains explicit language.] 

So, have you been reading the Girls Trip reviews? Some of them that people have been sending to me, I’ve been seeing them. I don’t go out and look because, you know, I don’t want to look for any trouble. [Laughs] There might be something bad, and then I’ll be like, ‘Now I gotta write this writer. Now I gotta write them and tell them my story and why I behave the way that I do.’ [In a ‘writer’ voice:] Tiffany Haddish, not only is she filthy, she likes to write letters!

Basically everyone agrees that you’re the breakout star of this film. Has your life changed? Did you wake up this morning all sparkly? Girl, no. My credit score’s still the same. I don’t know, I feel like I’ve been sleepwalking the whole time, like I’m living this dream, I’m doing all this press, going here, going there, and it’s my dream come true. It’s what I’ve always wanted to do. I don’t think my life has changed too much because I’ve been living my dream for quite some time now.

Your character Dina is so sweet and such a loose cannon at the same time. What made you feel a connection to her? Well, I feel like Dina is bipolar. And I think we all have that friend that’s like, one minute she’s extra cool, fun to be around, the next minute you’re like, “Why did I bring her with me?” And I have friends like that. I don’t know, I might be that friend! I just love the character, and she reminds me of myself a lot. She’s like me times ten. Some things that Dina does I probably wouldn’t do, like I’m not into golden showers, personally. But Dina is! [Laughs] But I have grapefruited before, I’m not gonna lie on that. So that right there, we got a lot in common.

Regina Hall, Tiffany Haddish Jada Pinkett Smith, and Queen Latifah in ‘Girls Trip’ (Photo: Universal)

Everybody is obsessed with the grapefruit scene. I was obsessed with it when I read it in the script! When I read it in the script, I was like, Aw yeah, I can’t wait to do this, I gotta get this job! I’m a pro at this! Nobody else will do it just it the way I would do it! 

How do you prep for a moment like that? You know, you just reflect on the past, and just think, what would a guy like? What would be entertaining to a man? And then do that, and then do a little bit of the opposite of that. [Laughs] Have fun with it. I don’t know. Anyone I’ve ever grapefruited has been deeply in love with me because I like to play with my food. [Laughs] I really do that! I go [makes loud slurping noises].

See, this is a print interview and I can’t transcribe that! “Haddish makes sexy but kind of disturbing noises.” [Laughs] This is a great interview.

You’ve said that the grapefruit bit took a few takes. How long were you actually doing that scene? I would say three hours total with them having to wipe my face off every time, get all the pulp off my face. “Reset!”

‘Girls Trip’: Watch a clip (NSFW; explicit language):

https://www.yahoo.com/%20girls-trip-girls-critique-%20lisa-211720181.html?format=%20embed®ion=US&lang=en-US&%20site=movies&player_autoplay=%20true

What was your favorite scene to shoot? The dancing scenes were my favorite. And the scene where it’s the four of us and I’m telling Ryan what I would do to her husband [after finding out he cheated on her]. Like, “Yeah girl, I got your back, I’ll get a Q-tip and I’ll stick it in his pee-pee hole” — all that stuff.

Did you improvise some of that? A lot of it, yeah. Because I think I was just supposed to say “Timberland boots” and “hot grits.” But I added a bunch of extra stuff to it. Even the part where you don’t even see me on camera, where I’m like, “But I will s–t in his shoes, though.” [Laughs] A lot of that I pulled from my own life. There’s some stuff they cut out, I was so mad. I saw it in the original cut, but I guess they cut it out because maybe they were thinking like, man, women might really try this. But it was a thing that I said where like, “Yeah girl, first I’m gonna give him an Ambien, and then I’m gonna burn your name in his penis, and put salt in it and mud, and then we tell these bitches to keep your name out they mouth. [Laughs] “That’s keloid, yeah! It’ll be ribbed for your pleasure — but you tell these bitches to keep your name out they mouth.” To me that’s the funniest thing in the world. And I’ve said that to men before, like “Yeah, let me find out you’re cheating on me, I’ma burn my name in your penis.”

I love that you had that list ready to go! Yes, girl. I have a full revenge list. Like, put crickets in a dude’s car. Buy some crickets, put them in his car, and then he just hear crickets all the time. And you put lettuce under the seat so you feed the crickets, and they make cricket babies, and you can’t get them out.

That’s so creative! Oh yeah, I got a lot of them, girl. Put ants in his bed, right? Just buy a box of ants and just let ‘em loose in the bed. Put sugar cubes all in the bed. If he try to cheat on you, bring another woman in the house, right, and they’re rolling around in the bed, and she’s like “Something’s so crawly!” and then they turn on the lights, and ants, all over them! Yeah. Mmmhmm. Now if you really want to get revenge, you get you some centipedes, put centipedes in the bed. Then he’ll never sleep in the bed again! [Laughs]

Now I’m just imagining the looks you get when you walk into your local pet store. You can order them off of Amazon! You can order centipedes. And worms. But I think pooping in his shoes is the best way, because you know, men put you through a lot of crap, and you can make them walk in that crap they put you through. See I got a lot of revenge things, cuz I’ve been hurt, so I think of a lot of things, and then I’m like, no, I’ll let God handle it. And God usually does way better than me. So they’re just thoughts.

Tiffany Haddish attends the premiere of ‘Girls Trip’ at Regal LA Live Stadium 14 on July 13, 2017, in Los Angeles. (Photo: Jason LaVeris/FilmMagic)

Sometimes with female-driven comedies, studios get nervous about being too explicit. Did the director ever tell you that you needed to dial it back? I mean, occasionally, not too often. More so, if we were coming in at 5 in the morning — and I was so happy to be at work — sometimes I’d be super cheery and chipper and talking a lot and it’s early in the morning, and maybe people ain’t feeling like that right at that moment, and then somebody might be like, “Uh, Tiff, turn it down.” I’m like, “Oh, OK, I’m sorry. I’ll be quiet!” But as far as dialing it back, every time we would do the scenes, first I would play it like it says in the script and then I would add a little something and either they’d keep it or not.

You all really go for it. I love Queen Latifah making out with a lamp — everyone gets those great moments. I told her to put her feet up! When she has her feet up in the air? I told her, “You should put your feet up in the air when you got the lamp on you!” She’s like, “I’ma try it.” We were always suggesting stuff to each other. I love [director] Malcolm [D. Lee] because he let us play. And it’s so funny because Jada, she’s so much like her character, sometimes she said things like, “I don’t know if I feel comfortable saying ‘bitch’ right here. I don’t know if I feel comfortable….” Like Jada — stop it, you’re from Baltimore! Come on now. [Laughs]

I have to ask about the scene where you unleash your bladder while you’re on a zipline. How did they do it, and was it as fun as it looked? We had to do some training beforehand, like how to be on a zipline, and they had these tubes down our backs. And I was telling them, “Hey, you guys, I can drink enough water, I don’t need these tubes, I can do this myself.” And they were like “No, we don’t want any hazardous issues.” [Laughs] But I was like, “I’m pretty sure I’m clean, you guys!” But we did that overnight, we started shooting at probably midnight, and we were peeing on real people. I mean we didn’t pee pee, it was just Gatorade. But it was fun. It was really, really fun.

‘Girls Trip’: Watch a trailer:

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