Men in Black: International led an overall slow weekend at the domestic box office with a series low $28.5 million US bow. Sony’s fourth entry in the franchise does away with stalwarts Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones in favor of Chris Hemsworth and Tessa Thompson and seems to have sacrificed a potential goldmine of nostalgia for its trouble. After accounting for inflation, it made around a third of what MIB and MIB 2 did on launches in 1997 and 2002, and half of what MIB 3 managed more recently in 2012. As the movie’s title implies, International sees its new pair of alien enforcement agents going well beyond the series’ familiar New York setting. Hunting down an extraterrestrial menace takes them to London, Paris, Marrakesh, and an unspecified exotic island fortress. All of this globetrotting, however, didn’t drum up much in the way of international sales. China was MIB: I’s biggest market on just $26.3 million. Russian showings were worth $5.1 million while it made $4.9 million in Korea. Mexico came in with $3.9 million and the UK, where much of the action is set, disappointed with $3.4 million, as did France at $2.5 million. In Sony’s defense, they did spend considerably less on this entry than on other MIB films with only $110 million going to production costs. 1997’s MIB, which had previously been the cheapest of the bunch, was made for $143 million in today’s dollars. Global sales for International totaled $102.2 million. As disappointing as these numbers are, moods should brighten on the Culver City lot soon enough when Spider-Man: Far from Home opens on July 2.

One more failed nostalgia miner opened in the US this frame. Warner Bros’ Shaft, their second Samuel L. Jackson led remake of the 1971 blaxploitation classic, started in 6^th with just $8.1 million. Jackson’s character is the same hard-hitting smooth-talking ghetto superhero on a mission to save his neighborhood, but this time he’s an old man painfully out of touch with the digital world. Regina Hall, Jessie Usher and Method Man also join him on screen. Netflix is reported to have paid half the $30-35 million production cost in exchange for international streaming rights starting two weeks after the US bow. Given how poorly African-American centered films tend to travel, Warner Bros. will have seen this deal as a no-brainer, but as is often the case it’s unclear how this will pay out for Netflix.

In Holdover news Aladdin crossed $700 million and finished second on the combined charts after a $64 million frame. Disney’s other horse on the track, Dark Phoenix, continued to disappoint and added just $9 million in its second weekend in US theaters. Its global cume is now at $204 million against a budget of $200 million, before P&A. Rocketman reached $133 million worldwide, while Secret Life of Pets 2 made it to $154.4 million. Somewhere in the background Avengers: Endgame added $5.6 million in 46 territories and reached $2.742 billion. The march towards Avatar’s $2.783 billion record continues, ever more slowly, and could get its final push from double dipping Spider-Man fans next month.

Next week Annabelle Comes Home and Danny Boyle’s alternate universe Beatles story Yesterday open in the US.

See the latest world box office estimates: