Just as it was starting to look like the box office was making progress, two big new movies underwhelmed in North America this weekend. The biggest let-down was Spiral: From The Book of Saw, a movie Lionsgate hoped would resurrect a franchise that ran its course quite some time ago.
With Chris Rock and Samuel L. Jackson in lead roles, the movie was expected to have a strong opening despite many theaters still remaining closed.
The Saw spinoff opened with $8.7 million, quite a bit less than the estimated $10 million - $15 million that was originally projected. However, with a lowly 38% on Rotten Tomatoes, perhaps it's no great surprise that moviegoers didn't feel it was worth braving the theaters to check this one out.
Zack Snyder and Netflix's Army of the Dead is playing exclusively in theaters for seven days before hitting the streaming service on Friday. However, despite a huge marketing campaign, it also came in below industry projections of $1.5 million - $2 million with a disappointing $780,000. It's worth noting that the movie is primarily playing in Cinemark theaters due to a deal with Netflix.
It's also a bad time of year for horror movies, especially now America is starting to open up and people are busy with proms and the like heading into the summer.
In our review of Army of the Dead, we concluded by saying: "Zack Snyder makes zombies cool again in Army of the Dead, but falls into bad habits along the way. Dave Bautista, however, steals the show, and the movie is fun, dumb, and wacky enough to make this a franchise we hope to sink our teeth into again."
What did you check out this weekend?