Box Office Report for the Week of June 16

Two weeks ago, Film Twitter was in complete shambles over the dire state of the box office. Of course, summer has been looking grim, and no one can blame them for reacting this way. But as I’ve stated multiple times in this column and on social media, film Twitter (and, by extension, social media as a whole) isn’t real life, and the bubble we’ve created is only a fraction of film discussions occurring outside of it.

It’s therefore completely unsurprising that Disney/Pixar’s Inside Out 2 has produced the biggest opening weekend of the year, outpacing Dune: Part Two, Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, and Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes. The latter film is holding out spectacularly strong, but I would not rule out Inside Out 2 culminating its run with a $900 million tally. The film will play in cinemas for over 100 days before hitting streaming services, a smart move that Disney announced early as tickets went on sale. More studios (*coughsUniversalcoughs*) should adopt this approach, especially if Inside Out 2 legs out strong before Despicable Me 4 takes over the 4th of July weekend.

With a $155 million domestic opening, Inside Out 2‘s opening is the second biggest-ever for an animated film, behind Pixar’s Incredibles 2, and the second biggest-ever opening for Pixar. It’s also the fifth film to open at over $150 million since the COVID-19 pandemic, not a spectacular statistic, but one that showcases that it is still possible, provided your films have a proper marketing campaign behind them and are easily commercial. I wasn’t as big on Inside Out 2 as others, but seeing any movie perform well in cinemas is always great, especially in such an unpredictable market.

I hope this will also shut down all discussions that the cinema sky is falling when it is still recovering from the pandemic and the strikes. This topic is varied and complex, and it is one that nobody has the ‘right’ answer to. We’d love to point fingers at easily attributable factors, and the short-term impacts are right in our faces, but it’s much more complicated than that. One thing’s for sure: this has given signs of life for cinemas struggling with a programming rut from Hollywood and feeding cinemas with uncompelling movies that seemingly weren’t worth the trip to the cinema.

Inside Out 2 is one of them, and Deadpool & Wolverine is also looking to hit big, with a projected (but conservative, which could mean way more) $200 million debut. This also proves that film Twitter truly isn’t real life since most users have complained about how shoddy the film looks, with many even thinking it’ll flop. Perhaps it does look bad, but does that mean audiences won’t show up for a team-up most people have been waiting for even before Marvel Studios acquired the rights to the X-Men and Deadpool? Come on, now…

With Deadpool and Gru’s returns right around the corner, the summer box office will leave and breathe for the first time in a long while, and we’re off to a likely successive portion of hits in the fall with Moana 2, Wicked (this could be the next Barbenheimer), and Joker: Folie à Deux being big titles to look out for. Oh, and there’s no doubt that Barry Jenkins‘ Mufasa: The Lion King will hit well. This is, of course, anecdotal, but the trailer was met with rapturous applause at the (packed) IMAX screening of Inside Out 2 at my neighborhood cinema, which never happens. Movies, now more than ever!

Here is the full list of the top ten films of the weekend:

1. Inside Out 2 (Disney): $155M – 4,440 theatres
2. Bad Boys: Ride or Die (Sony): $33M (-42%) – 3,885 theatres
3. Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (Disney): $5.2M (-4%) – 2,600 theatres
4. The Garfield Movie (Sony): $5M (-50%) – 3,411 theatres
5. The Watchers (Warner Bros): $3.7M (-48%) – 3,351 theatres
6. IF (Paramount): $3.5M (-56%) – 3,006 theatres
7. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (Warner Bros): $2.4M (-42%) – 1,874 theatres
8. The Fall Guy (Universal): $1.5M (-42%) – 1,663 theatres
9. The Strangers: Chapter 1 (Lionsgate): $760.000 (-58%) – 1,027 theatres
10. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (Fathom Events): $632.910 (-74%) – 1,035 theatres

Source: Comscore