'Jason Bourne' Tops Weekend with $60M; 'Star Trek Beyond' Suffers Big Second Weekend Drop
With the second largest opening for a film in the Bourne franchise, Jason Bourne topped the weekend box office as audiences came out in support of Matt Damon's return to the title role nine years after The Bourne Ultimatum. STX's ensemble comedy Bad Moms delivered a third place finish and the fifth largest R-rated opening of the year while Lionsgate's Nerve fell a bit below expectations, finishing in eighth place for the weekend, which was down a fraction from last weekend, but up nearly 27% compared to last year.

With an estimated $60 million, Jason Bourne delivered the second largest domestic opening in the Bourne franchise behind only The Bourne Ultimatum, which opened with $69.2 million back in 2007. Additionally, this debut is almost $22 million more than what The Bourne Legacy brought in back in 2012 when Universal attempted to keep the franchise alive with Jeremy Renner stepping in as the lead character. While the domestic opening may be down, the 13.4% drop compared to Ultimatum is just a fraction off the average 2016 sequel performance, which now has films opening 14.4% below their predecessors (excluding My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2).

Heading into the weekend we noted the average performance for a 2016 sequel was to open 14.5% below their predecessor (again, excluding My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2), which would have put Jason Bourne right around $59 million. Based on some rival estimates, that's a number Bourne could still end up finishing with depending on Monday's actuals.

Bourne scored an "A-" CinemaScore from opening day audiences, the same as Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation earned over the same weekend last year before going on to open with $55.5 million. In those terms, the Bourne opening compares favorably to Rogue Nation, which went on to gross just over $195 million domestically. Where Bourne may run into trouble is when you compare the critical and audience responses for the two films beyond the opening day CinemaScore. Taking those matters into consideration, a likely result for Jason Bourne is to find it falling short of Rogue Nation, ending its run around $160+ million, or, if you again base it on the yearly averages for sequel performances, right around $155.5 million.

GET MORE: Compare Jason Bourne and Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation Here!

Internationally, Jason Bourne brought in additional $50.1 million from 46 overseas markets giving the film a $110.1 million worldwide debut. The film opened #1 in 27 of those territories including a $5.7 million opening in Australia as well as Taiwan ($2.1m), Spain ($1.8m), Indonesia ($1.6m), Philippines ($1.5m) and Netherlands ($1.4m), Next weekend, the film begins playing in Argentina, Egypt, India and Slovenia with an opening in China set for August 23 followed by Mexico on Aug. 26 and Russia on Sept. 1.

While the film's performance is being touted as the largest international opening in the Bourne series, as noted on Thursday, previous Bourne films didn't open nearly as wide overseas, taking as many as six weeks to reach 45+ territories, which makes for a hazy comparison to previous installments. Rogue Nation, however, did open in 40 territories last July and brought in $65 million in its debut, which should clear a bit of the fog.

Before moving on to the rest of the weekend's new wide releases, squeaking into second place is last weekend's box office champion, Star Trek Beyond, with an estimated $24 million. While this does push the third installment in the new Star Trek franchise over $105 million, it represents a nearly 60% second weekend drop, a significant decline when compared to the last two films, both of which saw their domestic cumes climb over $146 million by the end of their second weekends. Paramount has already announced a fourth Star Trek film is on the way, but it will be interesting to see if the budget climbs as high as the $185 million spent on Beyond or if they dial it back to make up for what appears to be a declining interest from the audience at large.

Getting back to the newcomers, STX's Bad Moms brought in an estimated $23.4 million along with an "A" CinemaScore from opening day audiences. As was to be expected, the Bad Moms audience was predominantly female (82%) with 48% of the film's overall audience coming in over the age of 34.

The Bad Moms opening is a bit below Mojo's $25 million forecast and wasn't quite able to break out as some were expecting as a $30 million weekend seemed possible early on. Looking ahead, it's tough to say just what exactly this means for the film's future as one obvious comparison is to 2011's Bridesmaids, which delivered a 6.44 multiplier after opening with $26.2 million. On the other end of the spectrum you have Universal's The Boss from earlier this year, which opened with $23.5 million and went on to gross $63 million, a 2.67 multiplier. While lightning would have to strike for Bad Moms to match the Bridesmaids performance, a run around $60-65 million seems entirely reasonable and a solid performance overall given the film's $20 million production budget after tax credits.

The weekend's final new wide release was Lionsgate's Nerve, which dipped below expectations, bringing in an estimated $9 million over the three-day for a five-day total of $15 million after opening on Wednesday. Like Bad Moms this is below Mojo's forecast of $12.5 million and even below Lionsgate's expectations. As we said on Thursday evening, this is a tough film to comp given the Wednesday opening and genre, but from a performance perspective it's playing somewhat similarly to 2015's Entourage, which brought in $17.6 million after its first five days of release and went on to gross just over $32 million. Like Entourage, Nerve brought in an "A-" CinemaScore so look for something around $30 million to be the ceiling for this film's domestic run.

Lionsgate's weekend wasn't done there, however, as they expanded Woody Allen's Cafe Society into 565 theaters (+515) where it brought in an estimated $2.25 million for a $3,982 per theater average. This is a much better performance than Allen's last two films—Irrational Man and Magic in the Moonlight—saw in their expanded releases. The possibility for further expansion, however, has not yet been made clear.

In limited release, Open Road's Gleason delivered an estimated $129,223 from nine theaters ($14,358 PTA) while IFC's The Land and Starz Digital's Miss Sharon Jones brought in an estimated $12,000 each. Sony Classics' Equity opened with an estimated $80,729 from four theaters for a $20,182 per theater average and Roadside's Indignation, which opened with an estimated $89,072 from four theaters for a $22,268 per theater average.

The weekend's per theater champion, for the second weekend in a row, is The Film Arcade's Don't Think Twice, which brought in an estimated $261,523 from five theaters for a $30,084 per theater average.

Finally, The Legend of Tarzan and Now You See Me 2 both crossed $300 million worldwide this weekend becoming the sixteenth and seventeenth 2016 releases to do so. See the chart here.

Next weekend sees the release of Suicide Squad into over 4,150 theaters. It's going to be the widest August release of all-time and is looking to become the first August release to open over $100 million. In fact, don't be surprised if this one opens above Deadpool's $132.4 million and could very easily top $145 million. Also opening is Kevin Spacey's talking cat movie, Nine Lives, which is currently looking at a soft opening around $4-5 million.

For a look at this weekend's estimated results click here and we'll be updating the charts with weekend actuals on Monday afternoon.

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