Ric Roman Waugh’s Angel Has Fallen stole the No. 1 spot at last weekend’s domestic box office with $21 million in sales over its first three days of release. This flick, which features a stacked cast and a score of 45/100 on Metacritic, isn’t a franchise film, but it is about as lacking in fresh ideas as one, from the title and premise to the production style.

This is not a film I think I’ll ever have the urge to check out but it’s nice to see a non-franchise film take the No. 1 spot at the box office.

That being said, the pseudo-success of this film means that we’re going to get more Gerard Butler films. And that’s not a great thing.

Also at the Box

The R-rated teenage boy comedy Good Boys continued to roll over its second weekend of release, selling another $11.8 million, upping the flick’s 10-day sales total to $42 million in the U.S. and $49 million worldwide. That’s not bad for an R-rated children’s flick made for $20 million. This one, I will see eventually, mostly out of curiosity.

The poorly named Christian flick Overcomer took the No. 3 spot over its first weekend of release, selling $8.2 million against a $5 million budget. While I’m not a fan of Christian films, I do like the model of this movie. Spend $5 million making a movie, put it on a couple screens in every city and hopefully make a few million dollars. Christian films, like horror films, have a built-in audience and almost always make back their budget. I’d like to see indie and art house film fans step up a bit and have that kind of loyalty to the theater experience. Like, for example, indie legend Richard Linklater has a great new movie out starring Meryl Streep, and it’s bombing pretty hard despite getting a kinda-sorta wide release. Come on, indie film friends, go to the theater.

The live action remake of Disney’s The Lion King continued to roll, bringing in another $8.1 million, upping the flick’s domestic sales total to $510 million. Add in foreign sales and The Lion King has sold $1.5 billion in six weeks. It’s a new classic, I guess.

Rounding out last weekend’s Top 5 was Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw, which sold $8.1 million, bringing the flick’s so-far U.S. sales total to just $147 million (against a budget of over $200 million). Add in foreign sales and this one is at almost $600 million. I hear it’s really dumb and really fun.

And now here are the sad sales numbers for the best movies that were at the theater last weekend: Once Upon a Time in Hollywood ($5 million); The Peanut Butter Falcon ($3 million); Blinded by the Light ($2.1 million); Where’d You Go, Bernadette ($1.4 million); Luce ($250,000); Midsommar ($52,000); and Miles Davis: Birth of Cool ($17,000). Oof.

New this Week

Whoa, Jacob Aaron Estes has a new film coming out. That’s a name I’ve not heard in a long time and a name I didn’t think I’d hear again.

After making a splash with 2004’s indie sensation Mean Creek, Estes went quiet for some time, eventually releasing his second feature, a forgotten flop called The Details that should have been a hit (on paper, anyhow).

Now we get horror-drama-fantasy hybrid Don’t Let Go (what an incredibly generic title!), starring David Oyelowo, Storm Rein, and Byron Mann. Looks generic in general, to me.

Also out everywhere is Hannah Pearl Utt’s new comedy Before You Know It, starring Linda Arroz and Alec Baldwin. So I guess it’s generic title week at the movies.

And, finally, we have  Sujeeth’s new action flick, Saaho. It used to be that if you wanted to get your foreign film onto U.S. screens, you had to make a brilliant art film. These days you make a ridiculously flashy and expensive action film.

Eventually, one of these movies is going to blow up in the U.S. Will it be Saaho? Could be.