While The Emoji Movie was the bigger release of this past weekend the movie I was (obviously) more excited for was Atomic Blonde. The film, which stars Charlize Theron, James McAvoy, Sofia Boutella, and John Goodman clearly has a more than solid cast and when you pair them with John Wick co-director David Leitch for what has been advertised as a balls to the wall action extravaganza set to eighties music it would seem difficult to go wrong in any kind of way. While I covered this extensively in my review, the short version is that the action gets top marks while the movie tries to do too much narratively and gets too bogged down in story for its own good. That said, it seemed audiences weren't as attracted to a project with such credentials anyway as Atomic Blonde was expected to at least hit the $20 million mark, but after delivering only $18.5 million I imagine the fledgling STX Entertainment was rather disappointed. It was clear the distributor made a big push with this one as the marketing campaign was huge so to see the film come in only $4 million above what the original John Wick did on its debut weekend three years ago with a price tag of $10 million less is undoubtedly disheartening. The film also received a "B" CinemaScore (which isn't great by CinemaScore standards) and played to an audience that was 51% male vs. 49% female, of which 38% were under the age of 25. All of that taken into consideration, Atomic Blonde still has the majority of overseas territories to open in including in the UK, France, and Germany later in August. So far the film has earned almost $6 million abroad for a worldwide total of $24 million, but this still feels like a film that could very much break-out overseas if the stars align. It will be interesting to see how the movie plays over the next few weeks as I expect Dark Tower to go down in flames this weekend with nothing else in the way of action-centric releases until (maybe) The Hitman's Bodyguard and Logan Lucky on August 18th. Could this R-rated actioner benefit from coming out on the heels of Wonder Woman and lead to an eventual win? Only time will tell, but while I wasn't a huge fan of the final product I'd like to see more films featuring Theron's Lorraine Broughton and so I'm hoping this one pulls off enough profit to warrant future films. As always, be sure to follow the official Initial Reaction YouTube channel as well as on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter where you can find a new review (or reviews) each week!
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