Summer 2017's Biggest Box Office Winners and Losers

A slew of Nasty Women, a band of trusty superheroes, and Jack Sparrow walk into a movie theater… That was the setup for the summer, but domestic ticket sales became the butt of the joke, trailing last year’s May-September period by 18 percent. To make matters worse, the Labor Day frame registered a 17-year low, with the top 12 earners raking in a measly $51.5 million collectively. Still, some films laughed all the way to the bank. Read on for this summer’s box office winners and losers. 

It might’ve led the weekly box office for three consecutive weeks, but The Hitman’s Bodyguard‘s path to victory was hardly a spectacular showdown. The Ryan Reynolds/Samuel L. Jackson action-comedy benefitted from sitting pretty atop three weekend frames as the most prominent new wide release on the market, garnering default ticket sales as new titles like Leap!, a re-release of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and the long-delayed period piece Tulip Fever didn’t put up much of a fight.

Original concepts injected a jolt of adrenaline into an era of aging franchises and tiresome sequels. Audiences responded to new perspectives on history (Dunkirk, $180.3 million and climbing), romantic comedy (The Big Sick, $41.4 million), the heist flick (Baby Driver, $106 million), and even the superhero movie: A youthful, witty Spider-Man: Homecoming passed $325 million domestically across the Labor Day stretch.

Wonder Woman, the first standalone movie for a female superhero, reigns as summer’s highest-grossing film ($409.5 million and counting), and her 2017 cinematic sisters took note; Girls Trip quenched a comedy drought with a $31.2 million opening weekend (and has since grossed more than $100 million at the domestic box office), and Sofia Coppola packed fans into The Beguiled’s debut with a strong $57,323 per-screen average in limited release.

Some of the biggest box office surprises arrived in small packages. Buzzy genre fare (47 Meters Down topped $44 million), a Sundance slam (Beatriz at Dinner ate up $7.1 million), an interracial YA romance (Everything, Everything loved up 34.1 million), and demographic-driven dramas (Lowriders drove $6.2 million) all quietly racked up profits without much fanfare.

Chris-mas came early this year for Hollywood’s leading trifecta of same-named stars, each of whom launched high-profile superhero successes, like Pratt’s Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 ($389.7 million), Pine’s Wonder Woman ($409.5 million), and Evans’ hilarious self-mocking Captain America cameo in Spider-Man: Homecoming ($325.1 million).

While healthy foreign grosses kept this year’s big-budget continuations afloat, domestic moviegoers have grown weary of aging properties that simply retread tired formulas: Despicable Me 3 ($258.8 million), Transformers: The Last Knight ($130.2 million), Cars 3 ($151.5 million), and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales ($172.3 million) all registered series-low totals (or close to it) in the U.S.

The joyriding ladies and gentlemen of Girls Trip and The Hitman’s Bodyguard aside, comedy traversed a bumpy road this summer. Rough Night ($22 million) lived up to its title, and Baywatch ($58.1 million) sank The Rock’s winning streak. America didn’t even humor Amy Schumer’s Snatched ($45.8 million), or The House ($25.6 million), featuring genre staples Will Ferrell and Amy Poehler.

Well-known filmmakers couldn’t command audience attention this year either. Expensive underperformers included Ridley Scott’s Alien: Covenant ($74.3 million), Guy Ritchie’s King Arthur: Legend of the Sword ($39.2 million), Michael Bay’s fifth Transformers movie ($130.2 million), Jurassic World director Colin Trevorrow’s drama detour The Book of Henry ($4.3 million), and Luc Besson’s Valerian ($39.8 million).

Audiences aren’t showing Tom Cruise the money after all. Intended as a launchpad for Universal’s Dark Universe, The Mummy unraveled across its stateside run, earning just over $80 million in the U.S. and Canada—well below its reported $125 million budget. Luckily, Cruise’s next Mission: Impossible film should put him back in the black next year.