TAGGED AS: Box Office, movies, news
The temptation to write that Will Smith saved the summer box office must be weighing on people this weekend. Sure it’s a snappy headline, but it hardly gets to the roots of the underlying issues, nor is it exactly a fair statement. His return to the big screen with Martin Lawrence after the slap heard round the world at the Oscars had the second-biggest opening of the summer and fifth of the year. But during a summer when the deck would normally be stacked in May, this would have been the fifth-best opener to this point in 2023 and third best in 2022. Very conservatively, the summer box office is headed somewhere north of just $2.4 billion, and even a better-than-estimated start like this does not move the needle too much. Oh, what the heck — in a strike-affected year when the top 10 at the box office has failed to reach $100 million for 10 straight weekends, everyone should take a victory where they can find it.
Bad Boys: Ride or Die’s $56.5 million start is a slight comedown from the record-breaking $62 million that Bad Boys For Life made in 2020, breaking the record of the biggest January opening of all time by more than $20 million. (American Sniper’s $89.2 million came after three weeks of limited release.) As all-time first-week-of-June openers go, it ranks seventh ahead of X-Men: First Class ($55.1 million) and just behind Snow White and the Huntsman ($56.2 million). Right now, that would suggest final domestic earnings in the $150 million range, but it would need a big push to reach the $200 million that For Life made; that was the last film to achieve that gross before the pandemic began.
Sony is a long way from the $19 million budget of the original 1995 film, but apart from Michael Bay jacking that up to $130 million for the sequel, directors Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah have come under that with budgets of $90 million and $100 million, respectively, for their third and fourth chapters. It was a hit last time, and it looks to be a hit this time again with over $105 million worldwide in just a few days. Perhaps someone should rethink shelving their Batgirl movie. Anyway, there are few guarantees in life, and that appears to be the thinking this summer as well, as this is a momentary victory in what, on the surface, appears to be a summer of financial disappointment. Then again, if the studios could have avoided those strikes, Deadpool & Wolverine opens up May instead of The Fall Guy, and most of these conversations are moot.
Fourth place goes to the other big release of the week, Ishana Shyamalan’s The Watchers with Dakota Fanning. The poorly-reviewed folk horror tale opened to just $7 million. That is lower than Warner Bros.’ release of Vincenzo Natali’s Splice began with in 2010 ($7.3 million), and that film fell hard with audiences and tapped out with just over $17 million. The Watchers is likely to end up not far from that number, carrying a $30 million budget as the grisly year for horror continues.
Sony gets the 1-2 punch this weekend as The Garfield Movie moves back down to second place, and with just a 26% drop down to $10 million. That bring its 17-day total to $68.6 million. Could the film be making a run for $100 million domestic? Let’s not get too excited just yet. The film is still well off the pace of 2013’s animated Epic, which had $83.9 million in its pocket after an $11.8 million third weekend. That would put Garfield somewhere in the high 80s or low 90s, especially given that families are likely to abandon it for Inside Out 2 this week. Still, with over $192 million in the bank, The Garfield Movie is already in the black, and if there is one studio with little to complain about this summer thus far, it’s Sony.
Third place again belongs to John Krasinski’s IF with $7.8 million. The film will now clearly get over the $100 million hump here in North America. At $93.3 million, it may still be $5 million behind the pace of The Angry Birds Movie, but it bested that film’s fourth weekend of $6.5 million, and even with the draw of Inside Out, it should still be well above Birds’ major fall of 74% down to $1.6 million. Even as it will eventually become the second movie of the summer to hit the milestone, it is still about $110 million away from breaking even for Paramount.
Staying in the top five for a fifth straight weekend is the current summer champion, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes. After a drop down to $5.4 million, the film has surpassed the last entry, War for the Planet of the Apes, and is just about to clear $150 million. The film lines up nicely with Neighbors’ fifth weekend of $5.3 million, so we are still looking for a domestic finish in the $165 million neighborhood. It has passed $359 million worldwide but needs to get over that $400 million line before we can start talking profit.
Where we are unfortunately not going to be talking profit for a while is with Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. While many of us had hoped it would hold with some good word-of-mouth, the reality has sunk in that the film is sunk. (Note to readers: Just because a film is not making money does not mean it is not good, and you should not read box office pieces as such. Carry on.) Regardless, the film experienced a 60% drop in just its third weekend down to $4.2 million, which is disappointing, as its gross is at just $58.6 million. Warner Bros.’ own Baywatch had a better third weekend ($4.6 million), and that close proximity suggests Furiosa may not even hit $70 million domestic. (It is at $144 million worldwide.) Warner Bros. now has the distinction of having the biggest hit of the year (Dune: Part Two) and the biggest bomb, each with their toys in the sand. If only they had a film or two in their back pocket about a desert landscape and a coyote to spice up this summer.
In seventh place is the film that kicked off the summer anxiety, David Leitch’s The Fall Guy. Somehow Universal’s adaptation of a mid-80s television show with Lee Majors just didn’t take off. Though it has outgrossed 2010’s The A-Team (even if, with inflation, that release would be about $111 million today), another $2.5 million this weekend only brings its total to $85 million domestic and $165 million worldwide. Its not going to fall too short of $100 million at home, but it will fall short all the same. Not counting the pandemic years of 2020-21 (not to mention Infinity War and Endgame kicking off the summer in April), this will be the first year since 2005 (Kingdom of Heaven) when the summer was opened by a film not grossing $100 million.
Fathom Events put Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy in theaters for a single day each, and the numbers were good enough to get into the top 10. The Fellowship of the Ring made $2.4 million on Saturday. Estimates for The Two Towers on Sunday is $1.9 million, and The Return of the King is estimated to make $1.86 million Monday night. Renny Harlin’s The Strangers: Chapter 1 is just a few hundred grand away from becoming the top grossing horror film of 2024. $1.8 million this weekend gives it a total of $32.1 million. That would have been just the 14th-best total for a horror film in 2023.
Falling out of the top 10, Haikyu!! The Dumpster Battle made just $820,000 this weekend and has a running total of nearly $5.8 million. Tony Goldwyn’s Ezra fell 70% to make just $370,000. It has made $2.1 million. Sony Classics reissued Run Lola Run for its 25th anniversary and it grossed $144,000 in 275 theaters. A24’s release of Tuesday with Julia Louis-Dreyfus grossed $25,000 in a pair of theaters. IFC re-released Late Night with the Devil with David Dastmalchian into theaters for June 6 at 6 PM (think about it), and it was enough to push the film over $10 million. That’s a great win for the filmmakers and the studio.
The biggest opening of the summer and possibly the year is expected next week with Inside Out 2. Pixar’s $356 million domestic grossing hit that opened the same summer as Fury Road gets its sequel, and theaters are hoping for the first of two big family booms over the next four weeks. An infusion of cash would be welcome to a summer box office still waiting to hit its first billion. Also opening in limited release is this year’s Audience Award winner from the Chicago Critics Film Festival. IFC’s release of Alex Thompson and Kelly O’Sullivan’s Ghostlight premiered at Sundance and boasts a perfect 100% on the Tomatometer at the moment.
65%
Bad Boys: Ride or Die
(2024)
– $56.5 million ($56.5 million total)
37%
The Garfield Movie
(2024)
– $10 million ($68.6 million total)
50%
IF
(2024)
– $7.8 million ($93.3 million total)
32%
The Watchers
(2024)
– $7 million ($7 million total)
80%
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes
(2024)
– $5.4 million ($149.7 million total)
90%
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
(2024)
– $4.2 million ($58.6 million total)
82%
The Fall Guy
(2024)
– $2.5 million ($85 million total)
92%
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
(2001)
– $2.4 million ($2.4 million total)
95%
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
(2002)
– $1.9 million ($1.9 million total)
21%
The Strangers: Chapter 1
(2024)
– $1.8 million ($32.1 million total)
Erik Childress can be heard each week evaluating box office on Business First AM with Angela Miles and his Movie Madness Podcast.
[box office figures via Box Office Mojo]
Thumbnail image by Frank Masi/©Sony Pictures Releasing
