Battle at the Box Office 8/10

Probably the most eagerly anticipated box office results of the year by fans of schadenfreude, Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation managed to crush critically decimated new Fantastic Four to stay at the top spot for another week.

Rogue Nation took in another $29.4 million, putting it over $108 million for it’s two weeks out.

Fantastic Four, with a 9% on Rotten Tomatoes, bad mouthing from it’s own director and full on defense mode from it’s actors, collapsed across the finish line with $26.2 million.  Taking into account every movie ever made based on Marvel comics, it’s the 32nd “best” opening, above Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance and below Blade II.  Adjusted for inflation, it’s almost the worst opening ever, just beating Punisher: War Zone.  The movie cost $120 million to make and it’s doing extremely poorly overseas as well, so it’s going to cost Fox tons of money.

The Gift, Joel Edgerton’s directorial debut, had a better than expected opening with a third place finish of $12 million.  Just to throw some more salt in the wound of Fantastic Four, The Gift was in half as many theaters.

Vacation and Ant-Man rounded out the top 5, with the former not dropping that much from it’s previous weekend.

Meryl Streep vehicle Ricki and the Flash did an OK $6.5 million, which puts it at number 16 for Meryl Streep openings, ahead of Lions for Lamb.

Despite almost universal love from critics, Shaun the Sheep Movie didn’t even make it onto the top 10, making $4 million and coming in eleventh place.  It had a worse opening than the last Aardman feature, Pirates: Band of Misfits.