Charlie's Angels Worldwide Gross At $57.7 Million on a $48 Million Budget after 4 Weeks of Release

So why do major Hollywood studios continue to pay a premium by casting A-list actors in their animated features if voice acting is a dime a dozen?

The top 20 highest grossing films in the U.S. this year have a budget that averages over $140 million. So for Columbia Pictures to fork over $144 million for the "Ghostbusters" remake wasn't much of a stretch at all.

Big studios are willing to spend this much in hopes of getting a huge payoff. At the top of the list is Walt Disney Studios, which has virtually cornered the domestic box office market and accounts for a whopping 40% of total theatrical release domestic market share, thanks in large part to its subsidiaries such Marvel, along with Pixar and Lucasfilm. The good news for studios producing medium budget films in 2020, they won't have to go up against mega budget blockbusters from the Avengers, Pixar and Star Wars franchises as there are no scheduled sequels planned next year. So hopefully this bodes well for Underwater, which is also considered a medium budget film. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why its distributor, 20th Century Fox, which is also a subsidiary of Disney Studios, kept pushing off the release date to 2020.

When I stated that medium budget films struggle, of course I didn't mean that it's impossible for a mid-budget film to do well at the box office. "Knives Out", with its $40 million production budget already surpassed that figure in domestic box office in just two weeks. "Hustlers", had a budget of $20 million, yet earned a domestic gross of over $105 million.

And the movie that producers of medium budget movies should definitely pay heed to is "Joker", which is the first R-rated film to surpass $1 billion, with its measly, in comparison, budget of just $55 million. What's even more impressive is that, although the Joker is a character from the DC Extended Universe, there were no superheroes in this film. And its genre? This wasn't an actioner anywhere as much as it was a psychological thriller. I never thought I would see the day that a psychological thriller would gross over $1 billion (adjusted in 2019 dollars). Just goes to show that a well made film, regardless of its budget and genre, has the potential to do well at the box office.

Perhaps it was too long since a remake was produced. Take for example the original Hellboy which was released back in 2004, a year after Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle (2003) was released. It grossed $99 million worldwide on a $66 million production budget. The Hellboy remake, which was released earlier this year, bombed at the box office and made only $44.6 million worldwide on a $50 million budget.

And what about all the naysayers with their preconceived notions, who were insisting months before this Charlie's Angels remake was released that this was a remake that nobody wanted? It sure sounds to me that if this was truly the case, regardless of which actresses played the angels, it wouldn't have done well at the box office nonetheless, as "nobody wanted a CA remake," and was doomed from the start, if the naysayers were correct.

Speaking of films that "nobody wants", is there a website that lists the films that "nobody wants" along with films that "everyone wants"? If such a website doesn't already exist, I believe this would be a great idea, and producers would pay handsomely for such a service if they knew exactly what an oftentimes fickle U.S. moviegoing crowd really wanted.

DOMESTIC (30.9%)
$17,657,824


Ouch!

I was surprised that Cats did so poorly, given that it seemed to be such a well liked play genre.

I liked this Charlie's Angels movie and story, and I like all of those movies and the TV show. Too bad this one didn't do well as it introduced more aspects to the Angel's world that could have been built upon for future movies.