Ryan Gosling is just Ken: “Profession: Danger” disappoints at the box office – News

The new action film “Job: Danger” opened at the top of the North American box office this weekend, grossing around 28.5 million dollars (26.47 million euros, at the exchange rate of the day), at a time when that cinema has entered a crisis, industry observer Exhibitor Relations reported on Sunday.

Based on a 1980s TV series, the film by David Leitch, a stuntman turned director, features impressive action scenes, including one already officially certified by the Guinness World Records. It also benefits from the star power of recent Oscar nominees Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt.

However, first place is not enough to ignore that the premiere was below initial expectations of 30 to 35 million, already revised downwards, and that Ryan Gosling was unable to capitalize on the stratospheric success of “Barbie” last year.

In fact, box office sales fell drastically compared to the same period in 2023, when “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3” reached 118.4 million in the US and Canada, and the summer season in cinemas (officially the first weekend May) had the worst start since 2005, when “Kingdom of Heaven”, by Ridley Scott and with Orland Bloom, started with 19.5 million (a value not updated for inflation).

Analysts called the “Job: Danger” debut disappointing given the $130 million production cost, but David A. Gross of Franchise Entertainment Research says he saw it as “the potential start of a new action-comedy saga “.

Counting international revenues, the opening reached 65.4 million and the Universal Pictures studio will certainly hold on to the hope that the public’s good reactions will allow it to stay afloat in the coming weeks.

Moving from the 1980s to the next, in second place at the box office was “Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace”, with 8.1 million, a surprising amount for the re-release of a 25-year-old film, available at home and which hardly ever It was the most popular of the saga.

Last weekend’s leader, “Challengers,” fell to third place with 7.6 million, losing just 49% from its debut.

Luca Guadagnino’s film where singer and actress Zendaya plays a tennis star who retires after an injury and then helps her husband (Mike Faist) prepare for an important match against his ex-lover and his former friend (Josh O’Connor) has a total of 29.4 million in North America and 52.2 globally, a solid position undermined by a budget of 55 million, too high for this type of production.

Fourth place went to a new horror film, “Tarot – Letter from Death”, with 6.5 million. Although the critics’ reactions were terrible – “it leaves no horror cliché alone”, said Variety – the film only cost eight million, so the producers and studio Sony shouldn’t be left with nightmares.

In fifth place is “Godzilla x Kong: A New Empire”, with 4.5 million in its sixth weekend of release.

Monsters in Battle has so far grossed 188 million domestically and an additional 337 million worldwide.

Looking back, April was a ‘difficult’ month for Hollywood, with box office sales in North America falling 48% compared to three months of pre-pandemic April, highlighted David A. Gross in his analysis.

“There’s no way to make this pretty,” he said, adding that the industry is still suffering the consequences of last year’s strikes by actors and screenwriters.