Both First Man and El Royale bombibg

Then there’s Bad Times at the El Royale via Fox 2000 at 2,808 venues which is looking at a lowly $7.9M in sixth place. The whole offbeat thriller, which premiered at Fantastic Fest, seems to be throwback to the type of edgy 1990s fare that Samuel Goldwyn (read, David Lynch’s Wild at Heart) and Miramax use to platform, and it’s arguably a feathered fish for Fox; way too nichey in regards to what we’ve seen from the big studio though it’s doing better than the studio’s high genre pics like A Cure for Wellness (a dud with a $4.4M opening). In its execution, it looks like a Fox Searchlight film. Critics haven’t shrugged it with a 73% Certified Fresh score; they’re having enough fun in the movie. Like First Man, it’s pretty long, also at 2 hours and 21 minutes, but even if it was shorter, it’s not like this $30M production would really play any wider.

For now, we're expecting Fox's release of Bad Times at the El Royale to finish just outside the top five. The film opens in 2,808 locations this weekend and studio expectations are for a debut in the high single digits. Admittedly, this is a title we've had a tough time nailing down in terms of comps, looking at films such as the June release of Hotel Artemis ($3.23m opening), Logan Lucky ($7.6m opening) and Seven Psychopaths ($4.1m opening). We also looked to the May 2016 release of The Nice Guys, which opened in 2,865 locations with $11.2 million, but that was a summer release with a much more prominent marketing plan, which would seem to cancel it out or, at the very least, present a possible high end for the film's release this weekend. At this time, while some models point to a debut reaching the low teens, we aren't expecting an opening any better than $7-9 million.