Tech: 'The Dark Tower' wins the weekend box office despite horrible reviews

After almost a decade to get to the screen, "The Dark Tower" wins the box office despite a soft opening.

The summer movie season is crawling to the finish line.

Sony's long-developed adaptation of Stephen King's epic "The Dark Tower" finally hit theaters this weekend and won the domestic box office, though it was a very soft estimated $19.5 million on over 3,400 screens, according to Variety.

Though Sony will spin that the movie defied its lousy 18% Rotten Tomatoes score to win the weekend, the second consecutive week when one of its movies has been one of the top domestic earners despite a rotten score — last week "The Emoji Movie" landed in second place at the box office despite having a 7% rating — the bottom line is there hasn't been much to interest audiences at the multiplex these past couple of weeks.

Christopher Nolan's "Dunkirk" came in second place with $17.6 million, after topping the box office the last two weekends.

The $60 million-budgeted "Dark Tower" was a decade in the making. Previous directors like J.J. Abrams and Ron Howard (he's a producer on the movie) attempted over the years to adapt King's eight books into some kind of workable feature.

Though director Nikolaj Arcel (2009's "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo") finally figured it out, the end result was uninspired. However, with no other competition as most audiences have seen current releases "Spider-Man: Homecoming," "Dunkirk," and "Despicable Me 3," it turns out the greatest strength "The Dark Tower"had was being placed at the perfect weekend.

This first weekend of August certainly is different from previous years that put an exclamation point on the season with titles that set record-breaking openings like 2014's "Guardians of the Galaxy ($94.3 million) or last summer's "Suicide Squad" ($133.6 million).

from pulse.ng - Nigeria's entertainment & lifestyle platform online