The top film of this Memorial Day weekend, “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales,” is on pace for a $76.3 million four-day holiday after hauling in $23.4 million from 4,276 screens on Friday.
If that total holds, it’s not quite the box office returns Hollywood bean-counters were hoping for, as it will fall short of the $80 million projection target set by both Disney and independent trackers, and well below the $90 million 3-day total set by this franchise’s predecessor, “On Stranger Tides.”
The film failed to get “Pirates” out of the critical hole it’s in, matching “On Stranger Tides” Rotten Tomatoes score of 32 percent. The good news is that audiences that did see it gave it an A- on CinemaScore, up from B+ for “Stranger Tides.”
The more positive news for Disney is that this $230 million film is still set to make a solid profit off of overseas numbers, having already mopped up $86.5 million overseas. This is something that the studio probably planned for, as they held the film’s premiere at the Disney Resort in Shanghai, making this the first Hollywood film to premiere in China. The film releases in all major markets this weekend except Japan, a country that was the top foreign market for “On Stranger Tides” with $108 million. The film will open in Japan on July 1.
There is no such bright spot for Paramount/Skydance’s “Baywatch,” which made only $5.7 million on Friday after its wide opening on Thursday. Against a reported budget of approximately $67-68 million, it stands to make a five-day total of $26 million and a Friday to Monday total of $21 million from 3,647 locations, with overseas release coming next weekend. That puts the film in third place behind “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2,” which is tracking for a four-day total of $26.5 million in its fourth weekend in theaters. That would give “Guardians Vol. 2” a domestic total of $340 million, putting it past the domestic total for the first “Guardians” film.
In fourth place is “Alien: Covenant,” which is estimated to make a four-day total of $15 million. “Everything, Everything” completes the top five with an estimated four-day of $8.5 million.