Wonder Woman is on track to win the box office once again in its second weekend, while The Mummy is expected to fall flat. Patty Jenkins' megahit from Warner Bros. steamrolled the box office competition around the world in its opening weekend, making history in the process. One of the only June releases that could have given it a serious run was Alex Kurtzman's The Mummy, which is intended to be the launching pad for Universal's Dark Universe franchise of interconnected monster movie reboots.
Unfortunately for Kurtzman and Tom Cruise, The Mummy opened to poor reviews with many lamenting its stale action and lack of thrills or charm. The Mummy's projections for its opening weekend at the box office are no doubt disappointing - and it may not even be able to top Wonder Woman.
As reported by Variety on Wednesday, The Mummy is projected to earn up to $40 million in North America in its opening weekend. It's a slight improvement over the initial $35 million projection, but still may not be enough to finish No. 1 domestically - certainly far off its reported $125 million budget. The Mummy did have a record opening day in South Korea and is opening in 63 international markets, so not all hope is lost for the movie just yet.
Wonder Woman, meanwhile, could drop off by 60 percent from its $103 million opening weekend and still edge out The Mummy, as noted by Variety. That does not appear to be an official projection. Wonder Woman, of course, is the best-reviewed DC-based movie since The Dark Knight and may not even see that big of a drop-off.
Another box office win for Wonder Woman would be yet another accolade to heap onto what's been a massive success so far for Warner Bros., Jenkins, star Gal Gadot, and the DC Extended Universe. It marks one of the biggest movie-to-movie leaps in "franchise reputation" in history, and it appears on its way to another big weekend at the box office with the second-biggest Tuesday numbers ever seen in June.
The Mummy, meanwhile, appears to be a major disappointment for Universal and Kurtzman, who is also producing upcoming Dark Universe reboots of Bride of Frankenstein and The Invisible Man. It could still turn a profit if it brings in big international numbers, much like Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales. But between bombs like King Arthur: Legend of the Sword and Baywatch, and relative disappointments like Alien: Covenant and potentially The Mummy, Wonder Woman appears to be more of an outlier in an otherwise underwhelming summer movie season so far.
Next: Read Screen Rant's Review of The Mummy
Source: Variety
