‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem’ Slashes $3.8M Tuesday Previews, Eyes $30M+ 5-Day Opening – Box Office

Anthony D'Alessandro
·2 min read

Looking to find its way and pull boys in, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem is getting a midweek stateside start, with Tuesday previews grossing $3.85M. Showtimes started at 2 p.m. for the Jeff Rowe-directed feature, and the outlook is $30M over five days for the net $70M production. Some trackers have it at $40M. Mutant Mayhem is booked at 3,513 locations today and will expand to 3,851 theaters by Friday.

Given the Barbenheimer of it all, you gotta discount some of these movies in the marketplace. Tracking was bullish on Disney’s Haunted Mansion at $30M-$40M before opening, but that was before they knew what Barbenheimer really was. That theme park ride movie opened to $24M, $200K shy of the 2003 version of the film, which did $24.2M (unadjusted for inflation).

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Mutant Mayhem, from Nickelodeon and Seth Rogen’s Point Grey, is looking to be the family choice for the long haul into the fall. The movie is tied with Sony’s Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse as the best reviewed animated features of 2023 at 95% certified fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, and its current audience score is 94%. Props to Paramount: It was the only motion picture studio to brave San Diego Comic-Con sans stars, and it showed off reels of the pic to a near-full house in Hall H.

Warner Bros. has The Meg 2 opening this weekend, industry estimates are in the mid-$20M range. The studio’s Barbie will dominate in its third weekend with around $55M-$60M.

Last weekend during Barbie‘s second frame, she blazed a record final weekend of July of $217M. Last August, Sony’s Bullet Train was the last huzzah before a dead August-into-October, which was left barren of marquee product due to the post-production logjam caused by Covid. This month will be significantly better. The first weekend of August last year did $92M for all movies. Between Meg 2, Barbie, Oppenheimer and Mutant Mayhem alone, this weekend is bound to be well north of $115M.

Barbie led all movies on Tuesday with $15.25M, +2% from Monday, for a running total of $123.2M. She’ll cross the $400M mark on Thursday, the pic’s 14th day in release, faster than the pacing of Top Gun: Maverick and The Super Mario Bros Movie, both of which took 18 days to hit that domestic B.O. benchmark.

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