Why ‘Ballerina’ Isn’t Jumping Past a $25M Opening

SATURDAY AM: One of the most intriguing yet mindboggling dynamics in moviegoing is that which prevents audiences from getting off the couch, even when the word of mouth out there is great on a movie.

Such is the dilemma this morning for Lionsgate‘s John Wick off-shoot Ballerina, which won’t budge from its industry $25.5M projection even after an A- CinemaScore, one of the best in the Wick franchise. Lionsgate is seeing the movie in the $25.5M-$27.5M range. While that grade for the Len Wiseman-directed movie is under the franchise’s best in show, John Wick: Chapter 4‘s A, it’s well above the original John Wick‘s B, and in the same great company as John Wick 2 & 3 which also nabbed A-s. Friday for the Ana de Armas movie was $10.65M including previews.

It’s clear that a portion of the John Wick-faithful love this movie (I had zero patience for it, more on that later), but Ballerina isn’t showing signs of jumping into its forecasted $30M+ rafters. Again, it’s not a good sign for any studio when you show up on tracking at point A, and drop to point B or C. This happened recently with Karate Kid: Legends.

Why aren’t more people going?

There’s something to be said that when the movie popped on tracking three weeks ago, respondents were upbeat that the movie was “From the World of John Wick,” but when they looked closer noticed that Keanu Reeves wasn’t entirely in the movie. Lionsgate made it obvious in their marketing that Reeves is in the film, and even featured him in one of their one sheets.

One film finance source yelled at me yesterday about the less-than-expected Ballerina performance, “If their exits were so great, why the hell was the review embargo lift so late?!” The review embargo lift was on Wednesday, June 4, the day before previews began. In Lionsgate’s defense, their strategy on a review embargo lift isn’t unlike that executed by rival studios for a bulk of their titles. In addition, John Wick: Chapter 4 launched and teed off its excitement at SXSW, and that festival crowd would have embraced and screamed out praise of Ballerina if it was there. SXSW could have used another cool fanboy film this year.

There’s also the sense that many have already seen these girl-with-the-gun movies before, and there are plenty of copycats on streaming (i.e. Charlize Theron’s The Old Guard, Gal Gadot’s Heart of Stone, Jennifer Lopez’s The Mother) — so why rush out? But this one is through the lens of John Wick, and ya know, stunts! But you can’t just swap out our favorite puppy-loving, gun-toting surfer dude for a female lead, and that’s potentially why more of the Wick-faithful aren’t going. In full confession, I walked out of Ballerina (and I did walk back in for the ending). It was too wash, rinse, repeat in the fisticuffs and bang-bang, and there isn’t a biplane scene. This wasn’t Nic Winding Refn, John Woo or Ari Aster’s version of Ballerina. I noticed fireflies at the Chinese Theater during the screening and chased them out to the lobby. However, my cynicism aside, what matters more to me is the overall worth of motion picture commerce, and if there are movies that I don’t like, which rise to the top and beat the odds at the box office, well then, I’m an absolute champ of that, and drop-dead fascinated by it.

Funny enough, Ballerina in its Russian-dancers-turned-assassins feature is similar to another feature from Lionsgate, Hunger Games alums Francis Lawrence and Jennifer Lawrence’s Red Sparrow (2018), however, the de Armas movie is opening higher than that one which 20th Century Fox couldn’t figure out at a $16.8M start.

Also, as we mentioned, Mission: Impossible – Final Reckoning with its submarine and biplane stunts and the whole scheduled viewing by moviegoers for the best seats in Imax isn’t doing Ballerina any favors with a third place and third weekend of $14.8M. Granted, Mission: Impossible is older skewing at 62% over 25 to Ballerina‘s 45% over 35, but there’s an overlap in that both are 63%/37% male to female, and also with men over 25 (Ballerina at 49%, Mission at 52%) and women over 25 (Ballerina 27% and Mission 32%).

I believed back at CinemaCon, Ballerina would have had a better place on the calendar earlier in the year before A Minecraft Movie when we were starving for product. However, the reason why the movie is here in the first weekend of June was due to Reeves’ availability on the press tour. As we reported during the preview, while $25M may internally not be the right number for Lionsgate execs and the industry, but exhibition isn’t crying: There’s meat in the marketplace and this weekend is coming in at $115.5M, +11% a year ago when Sony’s Bad Boys: Ride or Die (which that studio took credit on reviving the sluggish summer box office) opened to $56.6M. In hindsight, Ballerina is better here in its counter-programming than during the desert days. Can you imagine if Ballerina wasn’t here? Then we’d be talking about how the summer box office has taken a turn for the worst. The industry can be grateful, and there’s more hits ahead this season in Universal’s Jurassic World Rebirth and Warner Bros’ Superman.

Geniuses of box office at the studios shrug their shoulders and observe that this is as good as it gets with solo female action movies; this movie was never expected to do John Wick business (it’s only beating the original’s $14.4M start), and was always expected to be in line with Furiosa ($26.3M 3-day) and Alita: Battle Angel ($28.5M 3-day).

Speaking of Furiosa, she had a similar dilemma in her marketing to Ballerina‘s: You can’t just swap out an iconic action hero (Mad Max) for another character, and the execution looked very similar to previous installments, which isn’t provoking more to flock.

Note, pre-streaming era, girl-with-a-gun movies did do much better, i.e. Angelina Jolie’s Wanted ($50.9M), Scarlett Johansson’s Lucy ($43.8M), however, there was a $20M opening range in Quentin Tarantino’s cult classic Kill Bill Vol. 1 ($22.2M), all unadjusted for inflation.

It’s been a while since Lionsgate had a big a tentpole (arguably since November 2023’s Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes), and Ballerina was so important to them that they wanted to delay the film for additional shoots (I’m told the entire project was five years in the making), and get John Wick architect Chad Stahelski’s hands in the mix to get this right. Also, in all fairness again, Ballerina is about amping the overall John Wick franchise library, expanding the universe, and delivering something (semi) different for the fans. Let’s not slap Lionsgate’s wrists for taking a try, just like we can’t fault Warner Bros. for making Furiosa. We can’t deny that Lionsgate pushed the movie at a $45M domestic P&A spend. Hell, they created (count ’em) 27 one sheets for the movie, and that type of quantity shows a studio’s commitment to a movie’s marketing. De Armas has been working it since CinemaCon. However, something isn’t bringing horses to water. Maybe tonight.

Disney’s Lilo & Stitch continue to be monsters at the box office with a $33M estimated third weekend after a $9.3M third Friday.

Saturday’s numbers:

FRIDAY EARLY EVENING: Currently, many have Ballerina in the mid-$20M range, but Lionsgate believes there’s a potential path to $30M at 3,409 theaters.

Nobody in distribution land wants to a see a movie with great exits underperform. We need all the wins we can get. Ballerina is a R-rated movie, and the audiences for those always come out at night. What’s hard here is that this spinoff came on tracking three weeks ago at $35M+, so if it eases to mid-$20Ms, eeesh. Friday, including $3.5M previews, is just under $11M.

I’m hearing now the production cost was in the low-$90M net range, more than 60% of that funded by foreign sales. Given that this is part of the crown jewel John Wick franchise, Lionsgate was determined to make the best movie possible, hence the year delay, hence the additional photography. With an estimated $45M P&A spend Stateside, iSpot shows that close to 38% was spent on NBA Finals spots, and those go for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Ya can’t say that Lionsgate didn’t push Ballerina out in the limelight, not to mention Ana de Armas has been promoting in Dwayne Johnson-like fashion since CinemaCon, all over social, etc.

Ballerina has just under 1,000 PLF auditoriums.

RELATED: The Movies That Have Made More Than $1 Billion At The Box Office

It’s a stacked summer, and this male-skewing action movie is in the wake of Paramount/Skydance’s Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, which has a firm hand on Imax screens, heading to a $14M (-49%) third weekend in third place at 3,496. That’s better than Dead Reckoning‘s $10.6M third sesh. Running cume by Sunday is $148.2M.

As we mentioned all along this week, No. 1 is Disney’s to lose as Lilo & Stitch is seeing a third weekend of $32M-$34M after a $9M-$10M third Friday at 4,185 theaters. Running cume is between $335M-$337M.

Fourth is Sony’s Karate Kid: Legends at 3,859 sites. The pic is seeing $2.3M in its second Friday with a second weekend in the $9M range, -56%. Ten day running cume is $35.7M.

Fifth is Focus Features’ second-weekend wide expansion of The Phoenician Scheme, which jumped from six locations in NYC and L.A. to 1,678 theaters with a second Friday of $2.5M and second weekend of $5.7M. Currently, Wes Anderson’s second weekend isn’t as high as his Asteroid City, which landed at $9M in 2023. We’ll see where this goes. Four stars, 81% positive and a good 62% definite recommend from a crowd that’s 64% under 35, mostly guys at 57%.

FRIDAY AM UPDATE, after exclusive: Lionsgate is reporting $3.75M for the previews to Thunder Road’s John Wick spinoff Ballerina. That number is from Wednesday and Thursday shows.

The Rotten Tomatoes audience score stands at 93%, equal to 2023’s John Wick: Chapter 4‘s which is best in the Keanu Reeves franchise.

Ballerina‘s audience score also is higher than previous solo femme action movies Furiosa (88%, 2024) and Alita: Battle Angel (91%, 2019).

Exits on PostTrak were excellent Thursday night with a 79% definite recommend. Again, that’s the fans, but it speaks volumes; we’ve said this before, but with the Comscore/Screen Engine polling service, “definite recommend” carries more weight than the positivity score which is 87%, still very good. This should bode well for Ballerina prancing past $30M. Men showed up to the guns-blazing ballet Thursday night at 61%. Best definite recommend and positive scores came from women over 25, who showed up at 29% and gave it an 83% and 90%, respectively.

Ballerina takes place during the events of John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum and follows orphaned Eve Macarro (Ana de Armas), who is beginning her training in the assassin traditions of the Ruska Roma. Her father died at the hands of Gabriel Bryne’s The Chancellor. She’s as mad as hell, and she’s not going to take it anymore.

RELATED: Ana De Armas Teases ‘Deeper’ With Tom Cruise & Reveals The Lessons ‘Ballerina’ Has Taught Her

Social media org RelishMix says: “Convo on Ballerina is running positive for action fans excited to see one of their favorite franchises expand in glorious fashion. The cast is the cause of a lot of the film’s positive sentiments including Ana de Armas, who has gained a lot of good will in other roles, and the promise of a returning Keanu Reeves as John Wick. Some comments are, ‘I love Ana de Armas, and I’m so excited to see her doing this kind of film after No Time to Die. She was the best Bond Girl!’ and ‘I didn’t actually expect Keanu to show up in the movie, glad he is gonna be in it!’ plus, ‘Did I spy Norman Reedus? Between Ian McShane, Keanu, and the legendary Mr. Lance Reddick‘. Many are pleased with the direction of this film and the action spotlighted in the trailer, sharing, ‘I was wondering if they were going to do a spinoff with the dancers! This looks EPIC!!!’ and, ‘I really hope that this is the start of a trilogy.’”

RelishMix also notes that Reedus has the most social media followers from the Ballerina cast with his activated 19.2M, and de Armas has 15M fans, while Reeves is still off the grid for his movies.

And as we told you Thursday night, it was imminent that Disney’s Lilo & Stitch would cross $300M at 4,410 theaters, the second movie to do so YTD at the domestic B.O. after Warner Bros/Legendary’s A Minecraft Movie. The hybrid/live-action feature take on the 2002 Disney toon made $5M Thursday, -7% from Wednesday, for a second week of $86.1M and a running total of $303.1M. Lilo & Stitch is expected to reign again with a third weekend of $35M.

Rest of the top five for the week is as follows:

2.) Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning (Par) 3,861 theaters, Thu $2.3M (-10% from Wed), Wk $38.9M (-59%), Total $134.2M/Wk 2

3.) Karate Kid: Legends (Sony) 3,809 theaters, Thu $1.2M (-10%), Wk $26.7M, Wk 1

4.) Final Destination Bloodlines (NL) 3,134 theaters, Thu $1.M (-11%), Wk $16.1M (-48%), Total $117M, Wk 3

5.) Bring Her Back (A24) 2,449 theaters, Thu $675K (-12%), Wk $10.4M, Wk 1

EXCLUSIVE: Sources tell us tonight that the John Wick spinoff Ballerina is looking to do around $3.5M-$4M in previews. That’s all in, including Wednesday fan screenings that started at 7 p.m. as well as Thursday showtimes that began at 6 p.m.

The hope is that the $80M-$90M Lionsgate production gets to north of $30M, which, as we told you, is around where recent female solo action movies openings live at the box office, read Furiosa ($26.3M 3-day last year) and 2019’s Alita: Battle Angel ($28.5M 3-day in 2019).

The Len Wiseman-directed spinoff produced by Thunder Road is expected to rank second behind Disney’s third weekend of Lilo & Stitch, which is looking to make around $35M; that movie crosses $300M today.

Ballerina was delayed a year to undergo additional photography.

Upside on Ballerina is that Thursday night fans are enjoying the Ana de Armas movie with a Keanu Reeves cameo, giving a 94% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes — as of this minute, that’s higher than any John Wick RT popcorn score; John Wick: Chapter 4 received a 93% in 2023. Critically, even though Ballerina is 72% certified fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, it’s not as high as the John Wick movies, which had film review scores ranging from 86%-94% certified fresh.

Ballerina‘s all-in preview cash is on par with the Thursday preview box office of Furiosa ($3.5M) and higher than the $2.4M Tuesday night preview cash of Alita: Battle Angel. Essentially, the thinking is to comp Ballerina to female solo action movies instead of John Wick movies. Female solo action movies are a completely different subgenre and don’t always attract the full-on male audience that typically attends an action movie with a male leading star.

Still, Ballerina‘s combined preview cash is higher than the Thursday night of 2017’s John Wick 2 ($2.2M) but far under both 2019’s John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum ($5.9M, ) and 2023’s John Wick: Chapter 4 ($8.9M, best preview cash in franchise).

We’ll have more updates as they happen Friday morning. Lionsgate didn’t return our request for comment.