Doctor Sleep, The Good Liar, Motherless Brooklyn box office: Warner Bros' 2019 slate has few hits, more misses

Warner Bros’ Doctor Sleep, much-anticipated sequel of The Shining, has failed to create an impact at the box office. The R-rated horror thriller boasted all the right credentials — good reviews, the Stephen King brand and backing from Warner Bros., home of horror label New Line, however, it opened to $14.1 million, an underwhelming response. Despite a mediocre performance_,  The Hollywood Reporter_ revealed that “movie studio chief Toby Emmerich had already struck a deal with director Mike Flanagan and his Intrepid Pictures to script a sequel whose working title is Hallorann, drawn from the character who appears in both The Shining and Doctor Sleep.” However, these footfalls may affect studio’s plans of producing a sequel of the film. [caption id=“attachment_7310001” align=“alignnone” width=“914”] Ewan McGregor as Danny Torrance in a still from Doctor Sleep | Twitter[/caption] Two of Warner Bros’ films— Edward Norton’s Motherless Brooklyn and The Goldfinch starring Ansel Elgort — rank among the worst opening weekends of all time. The Goldfinch, an adaptation of the 2013 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name debuted over the weekend with $2.6 million domestically. It’s the worst opening weekend of the year so far for a movie premiering in over 2,500. The movie made a combined $985,000 in 12 international markets over the weekend, according to Box Office Mojo. According to Forbes, Edward Norton’s long-standing passion project, Motherless Brooklyn, released in 1,342 theaters with only a mere opening $3.65 million. The $26 million adaptation of Jonathan Lethem’s novel stars Norton as a private investigator with Tourette’s trying to solve his mentor’s murder in the 1950s.

  The Good Liar, starring Helen Mirren and Ian McKellen, only deepened wounds when it debuted this weekend to a muted $5.6 million, becoming the studio’s latest literary adaptation that failed to entice audiences, reports Variety.

Meanwhile, there have been few successes for Warner Bros with Joker and It: Chapter Two. The  Todd Phillips directorial, Joker, continued its winning streak by crossing $900 million in worldwide ticket sales on 2 November. The dark supervillain movie has broken a number of records including crossing Deadpool’s collection — $783 million — to emerge as the top-grossing R-rated title of all time. Despite falling short of the first installment, _It: Chapter Two_ collected over $450 million globally and will become profitable from its $70 million budget. Shazam! and Detective Pikachu were each modest hits grossing $364 million and $430 million worldwide, respectively. Trade analysts believe Warner Bros will rebound next year with a lineup that boasts Wonder Woman: 1984, Harley Quinn spinoff Birds of Prey with Margot Robbie, Christopher Nolan’s action thriller _Tenet_ and The Sopranos prequel _The Many Saints of Newark._