“From the World of John Wick” does not equal John Wick, as audiences announced loud and clear this weekend.
With Ballerina landing below expectations, the box office results for the John Wick spinoff resulted in “a lot of lessons in proving the obvious,” says Richard Rushfield. Namely, that the star of your franchise matters, and for a series called John Wick, centered on lots of shooting and scowling by Keanu Reeves in the titular role, a movie about a new character won’t hit the same way as the originals. “You bring in new people, you’re starting a new project,” Richard tells Sean McNulty.
Ballerina, starring Ana de Armas as the newest skilled assassin, may hold up as its own film, but the Wick bump wasn’t much. The action pic fell below its pre-release tracking and finished behind Lilo & Stitch’s third weekend. If you’re David Ellison considering a Tom Cruise torch pass on Mission: Impossible, Richard & Sean suggest you take a long look at the Wick succession.
Elsewhere on this week’s Monday Morning QBs, the duo assesses David Zaslav’s announcement today that Warner Bros. Discovery, like Comcast and Endeavor, will be splitting off into two companies.
“There are two ways to get paid in media: building companies and taking them apart,” Sean says. “We’re about to see the other side of that.”
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