“Dead Men Tell No Tales, ” the latest film in the “Pirates” franchise, overcame poor reviews. “Baywatch” continued a string of lackluster TV adaptations.
LOS ANGELES — “Thar be squalls ahead.”
An old salt offers that warning as riders set sail on Pirates of the Caribbean, the classic Disney theme park ride, and Walt Disney Studios knew the same admonishment held true for a fifth movie based on it: Moving ahead with “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales” would mean navigating around critics and wooing back disappointed fans.
But the profit potential was too big to ignore. The fourth chapter, subtitled “ On Stranger Tides, ” was roundly seen as a creative dud, but it still took in $1 billion worldwide. Disney, convinced it could reinvigorate the franchise by fixing certain problems — nonsensical story lines, lackluster new characters — pressed forward.
The result: “Dead Men Tell No Tales, ” which cost roughly $400 million to make and market worldwide, collected about $62.2 million from Friday through Sunday at North American theaters, or 38 percent less than “On Stranger Tides” did over its first three days in 2011, after adjusting for inflation. The new film, advertised as the franchise’s “final adventure” (hah!) , is expected to add about $14.4 million in ticket sales on Memorial Day . (“On Stranger Tides” was not released on a holiday weekend.)
Reviews were horrible. Ticket buyers, however, gave the new film an A-minus grade in CinemaScore exit polls.
Overseas, “Dead Men Tell No Tales” collected a strong $208 million, or 17 percent more than “On Stranger Tides” managed in the same countries, after adjusting for inflation, Disney said. The top foreign market was China, where the latest installment sold about $67.8 million in tickets, the strongest opening by far for a “Pirates” movie in that country, perhaps showing the impact of the Shanghai Disneyland, which opened last year and includes an entire themed area dedicated to the franchise.
The other major new studio movie to arrive in theaters over the weekend, “Baywatch, ” from Paramount Pictures, was relatively dead in the water. Costing roughly $125 million to make and market, “Baywatch” sold about $18.1 million in tickets in North America, for a total since arriving on Thursday of $22.7 million, according to comScore. Memorial Day is expected to add $3.9 million.
Analysts had expected “Baywatch” to collect about $40 million from Thursday through Monday, in part because Paramount backed the film with a frothy, inventive marketing campaign. One of the movie’s producers, Beau Flynn, was so confident heading into the weekend that he boasted of sequel plans. “We have an amazing story already, ” he told Variety .
But many critics complained that “Baywatch” was poorly made, and quality has become increasingly important to ticket buyers, at least in the United States, which remains the world’s No. 1 movie market. The R-rated lifeguard film, directed by Seth Gordon (“Horrible Bosses”) and credited to six writers, starred Dwayne Johnson and Zac Efron and was based on the television series that ran from 1989 to 2001.
Paramount and its various financing partners had seen an opportunity to replicate the rollicking success of “21 Jump Street, ” which made a successful leap from TV to big screens in 2012 and spawned a sequel, “22 Jump Street, ” in 2014. But there is ample evidence that moviegoers do not like repurposed TV shows. Recent disappointments have included “CHIPS” and “Entourage.”
“Baywatch” will roll out overseas in June. So far, it has only opened in Taiwan, where it took in $873,000 over the weekend, which Paramount noted was sharply higher than initial “22 Jump Street” results.
