‘Ben-Hur’ box office took an even worse turn Monday

It brought in $20.7 million to bring its domestic total to $261 million.

Join us next week as a trio of new releases open, including the new horror film Don’t Breathe, the sequel Mechanic: Resurrection and the boxing drama Hands of Stone.

Two offbeat debuts slid in behind “Suicide Squad” and “Sausage Party”: the Iraq War comedy “War Dogs“, with Miles Teller and Jonah Hill; and the stop-motion animated “Kubo and the Two Strings” from Focus Features and Laika Entertainment. Disney Pixar’s Finding Dory is still the highest-grossing domestic release this year so far, with $473.8 million, and the R-rated Deadpool lands in the fifth highest debut spot with $132.4 million.

Here is the global top 5.

These opening numbers met the predictions of analysts, who had predicted that the movie would only be able to pull in between $10 million and $15 million.

With “Ben-Hur” faltering, “Suicide Squad” managed to snag first place for the third consecutive weekend. Such a performance is an unequivocal poor result for a movie that cost about $100 million to make (after rebates). CinemaScore was a solid A- so the people who went to see it liked it, just not enough of them were interested in going to the theaters. MGM and Paramount may not have expected their new Ben-Hur to acquire the legendary status of that film (much less the haul of Oscars), but they no doubt hoped to court the same audiences that made such movies as 300 and Gladiator such hits.

Ahead of the release a marketing push was put behind promoting the picture in Christian communities, rather than an action-packed desert romp.

Box Office Mojo doesn’t break down the 1959 film’s opening weekend ticket sales, but the film collected $848.68 million (adjusted for 2016 inflation) throughout its lifetime and ranks as the 14th most successful film based on this metric.

Based on a true story, “War Dogs” stars Jonah Hill and Miles Teller as a pair of twentysomething American hotshots who score a lucrative Pentagon contract to run guns for USA allies in Afghanistan.

Another new entry – Kubo and the Two Strings – landed at number four after taking $12.6m (£9.7m). Rounding out the top 10 was Florence Foster Jenkins which fell a reasonable 35% in its second weekend to an estimated $4.3M, bringing its cume up to $14.4M. Some of the movies this summer have gotten as much as 90 percent of their global box office totals from overseas, he said.