Nothing seismic going on in a traditional weak Labor Day weekend in regards to box office fluctuations, but we’ll leave you with this: Disney, together with its 20th Century Studios label, led summer 2024 (May 3-Labor Day) with $1.53 billion thanks to a comeback in brands Pixar with Inside Out 2 and MCU with Deadpool & Wolverine, as well as its Fox brands of Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes and Alien: Romulus. Disney is up +121% over last summer’s $692 million misfires of Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, The Haunted Mansion and the foreign fallout of Little Mermaid.
Universal was second, including Focus Features, with $754.6M (+23% from the summer of Oppenheimer, the studio grossing $616M) built chiefly on the backs of Twisters and Despicable Me 4. True, Fall Guy didn’t fire off summer, and it was always meant to be off-season programming, but talk about getting blood from rock with $92.9M for that feathered fish off a $27.7M opening, a 3.3x multiple. That’s close to the same multiple of David Leitch’s last directed summer movie, Bullet Train. Not putting lipstick on a pig, but noteworthy.
Sony was third after firing off the summer streak back in early June with Bad Boys: Ride or Die, followed by its female romance renaissance, It Ends With Us. The Culver City lot collected $520.4M including Sony Classics and Crunchyroll labels. The studio wasn’t without their failures as they swung for the fences with this weekend’s Blumhouse title Afraid ($4.4M 4-day), Harold and the Purple Crayon ($17M) and their distribution of Apple’s silly expensive $100M Fly Me to the Moon ($20.4M), off which Sony collected a distribution fee.
Paramount is next for the summer with $250M fueled by A Quiet Place: Day One ($138.9M) and If ($111.1M). No bombs for the Melrose lot which is about to get swallowed up by Skydance after that long summer dance. Triple note, Skydance, that the current motion picture administration in charge is solid. No need to get an ego and turn it upside down with fresh faces when the factory is humming, capisce?
After a robust spring with Legendary’s Dune: Part Two and Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, which stateside combined grossed close to half billion, Warner Bros. couldn’t crack $170M for the May-Labor Day frame (-81% from the summer of Barbie which drove $877M) comprised of two Shyamalan family movies, Trap and The Watchers; Kevin Costner’s three-hour part-one western, Horizon, and George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road $168M price tag prequel, Furiosa, which the Burbank, CA lot had great faith in, however, the film didn’t register with any mass audience at $67.4M.
As far as others in the top 10, praise to NEON with $85M due to the sleeper success of its brilliantly marketed horror movie Longlegs and also showcase distributor, Fathom Events, which popped into summer’s top ten distributors with $54.2M thanks to the re-release of Laika’s Coraline. The real story with that Oscar-nominated movie being that the distrib got the lifetime domestic cume of the stop-motion title up to $110.2M. That’s more than the Tim Burton produced Nightmare Before Christmas ($87.6M), which Coraline filmmaker Henry Selick also directed. Lionsgate fizzles with $73.9M off two franchise movies which did not work: Borderlands and The Crow while Amazon MGM grossed $46.4M from Blink Twice and the residual of Luca Guadagnino’s Zendaya tennis pic, Challengers. A24 did $35M, largely from MaXXXine and the hangover of spring release, Civil War.
Sunday updated chart:
1.) Deadpool & Wolverine (Dis) 3,630 (-210) theaters, Fri $3.6M (-26%) Sat $5.7M Sun $5.8M Mon $4.2M 3-day $15.1M (-17%) 4-day $19.4M, Total $603.8M/Wk 6
2.) Alien: Romulus (20th/Dis) 3,120 (-795) theaters, Fri $2.2M (-51%) Sat $3.3M Sun $3.7M Mon $2.1M 3-day $9.3M (-43%), 4-day $11.5M Total $90.9M/Wk 3
3.) It Ends With Us (Sony) 3,551 (-288) theaters, Fri $2.1M (-45%) Sat $2.6M Sun $2.7M Mon $2.1M 3-day $7.4M (-36%), 4-day $9.5M Total $135.8M/Wk 4
4.) Reagan (Showbiz) 2,754 theaters, Fri $2.6M Sat $2.4M Sun $2.4M Mon $1.78M 3-day $7.4M 4-day $9.2M/Wk 1
5.) Twisters (Uni/WB) 3,005 (-201) theaters, $1.8M (+6%) Sat $2.8M Sun $2.4M Mon $1.59M 3-day $7.16M (+17%), 4-day $8.75M Total $259.6M/Wk 7
6.) The Forge (Sony) 1,921 (+103) theaters, Fri $1.1M Sat $1.6M Sun $1.8M Mon $1.7M 3-day $4.6M (-30%), 4-day $6.3M, Total $16M/Wk 2
7.) Blink Twice (AMZ MGM) 3,067 theaters, Fri $1.3M (-54%) Sat $1.7M Sun $1.6M Mon $1.2M 3-day $4.68M (-36%) 4-day $5.9M, Total $16.5M/Wk 2
8.) Despicable Me 4 (Uni) 2,698 (+107) theaters, Fri $860K (-18%) Sat $1.6M Sun $1.6M Mon $1.53M 3-day $4.08M (-4%), 4-day $5.6M Total $355.6M/Wk 9
9.) Afraid (Sony) 3,003 theaters, Fri $1.3M Sat $1.2M Sun $1.1M Mon $775K 3-day $3.7m, 4-day $4.4M/Wk 1
10.) Coraline (Fath) 1,168 (-354) theaters, Fri $708K (-49%) Sat $1.2M Sun $1.2M Mon $1.1M 3-day $3.15M (-38%), 4-day $4.3M, Total $30.6M/Wk 3