The Dark Tower, the Stephen King adaptation, took a modest lead, coming in atop the box-office list on Friday with an estimated $7.7 million.
Kathryn Bigelow’s new drama Detroit stumbled badly, collecting just $2.62 million.
The thriller Kidnap, the weekend’s other new wide release, arrived in the middle of the day’s top ten, with $3.68 million.
The Dark Tower, Sony and MRC’s first adaptation of the King fantasy novels, with its initial $7.7 million take (including $1.8 million in Thursday previews) is on its way to a weekend domestic debut of about $18.9 million.
Starring Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey, the movie is estimated to generate below $20 million. The film, which cost $60 million to make, should still land No. 1 for the weekend ahead of holdover Dunkirk, which took in another $5 million on Friday. In the film, Elba plays a gunslinger who is determined to hunt down his nemesis, the Man in Black (McConaughey), and protect the Dark Tower, a powerful structure that protects the world from darkness.
This weekend’s other two new wide releases — the Halle Berry starrer Kidnap and the serious-minded Detroit — look as if they will debut below holdovers Dunkirk, Emoji Movie and Girls Trip for the weekend.
Detroit, by Kathryn Bigelow, pulled in just $2.62 million on Friday (including $525K in previews) as it heads toward a weekend tally of $7 million to $8 million. Expanding into 3,007 theaters after opening in select theaters last weekend, behind its tracking, which initially had it earning in the $13 million range.
The first release from Megan Ellison’s Annapurna Pictures under its own distribution label, the film earned a largely positive Rotten Tomatoes rating of 89 percent, but its recreation of the 1967 Detroit riots appears to be meeting audience resistance. It stars John Boyega, Will Poulter, Algee Smith, Jason Mitchell, Jack Reynor and Anthony Mackie. The script was written by Bigelow’s collaborator Mark Boal.
On the specialty front, Taylor Sheridan’s snow-bound thriller Wind River, starring Jeremy Renner, scored a strong $52,212 in just four theaters for a per-theater average of $13,053.
Meanwhile, Dunkirk, which held down the number two spot on Friday as began its third weekend of release, has collected $127million domestically and crossed $300 million at the worldwide boxoffice.
