Seeing how well the now legendary “Barbenheimer” double header of Greta Gerwig‘s Barbie and Christopher Nolan‘s Oppenheimer did their opening weekend, it was going to be nigh impossible for anything to defeat them. One movie learned that lesson harder than another one this weekend.
This Past Weekend
Despite an opening weekend well above most expectations and projections, Warner Bros. Barbie, starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling, held up exceedingly well its second weekend, remaining in first place with a minor 43 percent drop for an estimated second weekend take of $93 million. Barbie is now, not only the fastest movie to make $300 million for Warners (and the biggest second-weekend gross for the studio ever), but it has also passed $350 million with $351.4 million, which puts it on track to overtake Sony‘s Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse to become the highest-grossing movie of the summer sometime this coming week.
Barbie is also looking likely to become only the second movie of the year (after Universal‘s The Super Mario Bros Movie) to hit a billion worldwide, as it’s currently at $774.5 million worldwide after less than two weeks in 70 markets. This weekend, it added another $122.2 million overseas to bring its international total to $423.1 million, and
Nolan’s Oppenheimer, starring Cillian Murphy and a cast of seemingly hundreds of white male actors, also held up well in its second weekend, maintaining second place with a 44 percent drop and an estimated $46.2 million to bring its North American total to $174 million. It should surpass both Interstellar and Dunkirk sometime this coming week. It earned another $72.4 million overseas this weekend to bring its international total to $226.3 million and its global total over $400 million, making it Nolan’s sixth-highest grosser after just two weeks.
Oppenheimer grossed $80 million of that amount from IMAX screens worldwide with $24 million of that this weekend. Not surprisingly, Universal has extended Oppenheimer‘s run on 70mm IMAX screens until August 17, but more surprisingly, most of those screenings have already sold out.
That brings us to Disney’s Haunted Mansion, directed by Justin Simien (Dear White People) and starring Lakeith Stanfield, Rosario Dawson, Owen Wilson, Danny De Vito, and Tiffany Haddish, as well as Oscar winners Jamie Lee Curtis and Jared Leto as popular ghosts from the Disney attraction. It received pretty horrid reviews going into the weekend when Disney opened it in 3,740 theaters – probably all that it could get away from “Barbenheimer.” After making less than $10 million on Friday ($3.1 million of that from earlier previews), it settled into third place with an estimated $24.2 million, which is just slightly less than where the Eddie Murphy-starring The Haunted Mansion opened in 2003, not accounting for the twenty years of ticket inflation between them.
Haunted Mansion‘s “B+” CinemaScore isn’t great but also isn’t that bad, though Disney would probably wish it were higher, considering that it’s facing a new family film on Wednesday. (See below.) The movie has a reported production of $158 million, probably before marketing, and it’s going to have to rely heavily on international if it even wants to come close.
Angel Studios‘ continues to do well with its biodrama, Sound of Freedom, starring Jim Caviezel, which took fourth place this weekend with $12.4 million, down 37 percent from last week but coming close to a significant milestone with almost $149 million grossed domestically so far. It’s currently playing in 3,411 theaters, having added more in its fourth weekend, but we’ll have to see if it can maintain that number of theaters over the next few busy weeks.
Paramount‘s Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning 2, starring Tom Cruise, lost over a thousand theaters on Friday, and it’s likely to lose even more this coming week, as it took fifth place with $10.7 million (down 45 percent) for a domestic total of $139.2 million. It may have passed 2006’s Mission: Impossible III in terms of a domestic gross, but it has a ways to go if it doesn’t want to achieve the second-worst gross for the franchise, ending up below the $180 million grossed by the original movie in 1996. It also has to justify the fact there’s still a second part of the story coming out next summer. (Incidentally, I have a pretty cool interview with Mission: Impossible Editor Eddie Hamilton over at Below the Line.)
A24 has done quite well with what’s been dubbed “elevated horror,” so picking up the Australian Philippou Bros‘ feature debut, Talk to Me, starring Sophie Wilde, may have been a no-brainer. Opening in 2,340 theaters on Friday after receiving almost unanimously positive reviews since debuting at Sundance, it made $4.2 million on Friday with $1.2 million of that coming from Thursday previews, and A24 should be thrilled with the movie taking in an estimated $10 million this weekend, averaging $4,274 per location. That’s well more than the movie’s original production budget, but it’s not known how much A24 paid for it and put into marketing.
Disney and Lucasfilm‘s Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, starring Harrison Ford as the venerable adventurer, dropped two places to seventh with roughly $4 million (down 40 percent), followed by Pixar Animation‘s Elemental with $3.4 million (down 41 percent). Indiana Jones has grossed $167 million domestically compared to Elemental‘s $134.8 million, neither great when you consider that both May Disney releases grossed close to or more than $300 million.
The Patrick Wilson-directed horror film, Insidious: The Red Door, took ninth place with $3.2 million and $78 million domestically, while also becoming the highest-grossing movie in the franchise with $174 million worldwide.
GKIDS released Takehiko Inoue‘s The First Slam Dunk into 581 theaters on Friday, but it only brought in $626,000, averaging $1,077 per theater, so well outside the top 10.
Searchlight Studios‘ comedy Theater Camp brought in another $635,000 this weekend from 295 locations, with $1.5 million grossed so far. It will be expanding into over 600 theaters on Friday, and we’ll have to see if it’s able to make that the $8 million that Searchlight spent on buying up distribution rights at Sundance in January.
Magnolia Pictures released the doc Kokomo City to just a single theater, the IFC Center in New York, where it made $16,650 with plans for further expansion on Aug. 4.
Last Year
Last July ended with an animated movie from Warner Bros. starring many popular DC superheroes… and their pets, as DC League of Super-Pets, with voices provided by Dwayne Johnson, Kevin Hart, Kate McKinnon, and more, opened in 4,314 theaters, but only won the weekend with a disappointing $23 million. That was $5,332 per theater, but enough to knock Jordan Peele‘s Nope to second place with $18.6 million, down 58 percent from its opening weekend with $80.6 million grossed domestically.
Focus Features opened The Office star B.J. Novak‘s directorial debut, Vengeance, into 998 theaters where it made $1.8 million or $1,759 per theater, enough to open in tenth place.
Upcoming
Opening on Wednesday in over 3,600 theaters is Paramount’s animated Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle – Mutant Mayhem, directed by Jeff Rowe (The Mitchells vs. the Machines) and co-written and produced by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg with some actual teens voicing the Turtles, surrounded by the likes of Ice Cube, Ayo Edebiri (voicing April O’Neil), with Jackie Chan, John Cena, Rose Byrne, Paul Rudd, Maya Rudolph amongst the voice cast.
I’m not going to go all the way back to the three movies made in the early ‘90s, even if the 1990 original was hugely influential on many Millennials who now have their own kids. (The first movie grossed $202 million worldwide, doing better than both its sequels.) In 2007, Warner Bros. made an animated movie, TMNT, which opened with $24.2 million and only made $54.1 million domestic.
Seven years later, Paramount released its first live action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, produced by Michael Bay and directed by Jonathan Liebesman (that awful Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake), this same weekend in 2014, and it opened with $65.6 million on its way to $191.2 million domestic and $485 million worldwide. Its sequel, Out of the Shadows, two years later opened with $35 million and only made $245.3 million. Neither of them received good reviews, but NONE of the Turtles movies have received positive reviews… until now. That’s right, somehow, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem has rated an astounding 96 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, which I’m sure Paramount will be flaunting to death.
While kids might not necessarily know who Rogen and Goldberg are, their parents should, and that should also help it, as this is not their first animation rodeo, having had a hit with Sausage Party in 2016, which made $34.3 million its opening weekend.
Because this one opens earlier in the week – much like other Rogen/Goldberg August releases i the past – that generally night leave less money for the weekend. Because of that, this will have to settle for second place behind Barbie, as that remains in first place for a third weekend with $50 million or more. Expect this one to end up with mid-$30 millions over the weekend but with another $15 to 20 million during the weekdays. Honestly, going up against Barbie and Oppenheimer, anything over $45 million for the movie’s first five days will be seen as a triumph.
Warner Bros. is opening its giant shark sequel, Meg 2 – The Trench, in over 3,800 theaters on Friday, once again starring Jason Statham in the follow-up to the movie that surprised with a $45.4 opening in 2018. It would go onto make $527 million worldwide, enough to warrant a sequel, this time having British indie genre filmmaker Ben Wheatley (Kill List) directing his biggest studio movie to date ala Greta Gerwig with Barbie.
Will this fare as well as the original movie, which opened in the second weekend of August that year? Well, The Meg wasn’t facing the behemoth that is “Barbenheimer,” first of all, but it also isn’t opening against a sure thing like the animated Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Instead, the original movie faced the third weekend of Mission: Impossible – Fallout (also faring better than Dead Reckoning Part 1), Screen Gems‘ Slender Man, and Spike Lee‘s BlackKklansman in its first weekend. (It would be bumped from #1 by another Warners movie, Crazy Rich Asians, the following weekend.)
The sequel offers multiple giant prehistoric sharks, and a damn good trailer that’s been shown in many large premium formats, even though it won’t get any IMAX screens away from Nolan’s Oppenheimer, which has now booked them through mid-August. Unlike Turtles, there will be no Meg 2 reviews before opening day, which is never a good sign.
There’s just too much working against Meg 2, including not being able to do much press for it, so I’d expect it to open more in the mid-to-high $20 millions.
Bill Pohlad, director of the Brian Wilson biopic, Love and Honor, helms Dreamin’ Wild, a similar biopic, starring Casey Affleck and Walter Goggins as Donnie and Joe Emerson. It also stars Zooey Deschanel, and it’s getting a moderately wide release by Roadside Attractions.
Strangely, Sony Pictures Classics has decided to release Randall Park‘s directorial debut, Shortcomings, starring Justin H. Min (Beef) and Sherry Cola (Joy Ride) and based on Adrian Tomine‘s serialized Optic Nerve series, fairly wide, which doesn’t seem like the best move. (We’ll have an interview with Park sometime this week.)
Amy Redford‘s thriller What Comes Around will be released by IFC Films, but wisely, as a limited release.
Edward Douglas has been writing about the box office for 21 years at places like ComingSoon.net, The Tracking Board, and many others, but mostly under the banner of “The Weekend Warrior.” He’s also a film critic with bylines at Film Journal, The New York Daily News, Den of Geek, and more.
Box Office Breakdown will be posted each week by Monday morning. You can read other features by Edward Douglas over at Below the Line and Above the Line.
