Box Office Report for the Week Of July 14

This week was not only a great weekend for Despicable Me 4, which officially made the franchise cross the $5 billion mark and whose fourth installment has made over $437 million globally, but also for NEON, who have now one of their most successful films with Longlegs.

Made under a $10 million budget, the film opened with a record-breaking $22 million domestically, the highest-grossing opening ever for a NEON film, and the best opening for an original horror movie released this year so far. Even with a rather dismal CinemaScore (C+, compared to the 87% on Rotten Tomatoes), the buzz for Osgood Perkins‘ film can’t be ignored.

I wouldn’t say I am the biggest fan of the movie, but it had one of the cleverest (if not the best) marketing campaigns for any film released this year, revealing very little in its trailers (most notably purposefully hiding how Nicolas Cage looked like) and diverting its attention to generate excitement through a fully online campaign (including cryptic Letterboxd comments on random reviews from Longlegs himself). That’s how marketing campaigns should be done, never by revealing the entire movie in front of your audience.

The proof is in the pudding: most showtimes of Longlegs are currently sold out, and the movie will likely end up as the highest-grossing independent production of the year if the buzz stays as strong after its first weekend. Compared to MaXXXine, which fell precipitously in its second weekend, Longlegs can continue its momentum before NEON’s Cuckoo releases a month later.

On the flip side, a movie ABOUT marketing couldn’t match up the level of interest that the Longlegs campaign had, as Apple TV+’s Fly Me to the Moon bombed in its opening weekend, with a horrendous $10 million tally over a $100 million budget. Some will argue that it won’t be that big of a deal for Apple since it was initially planned for a streaming release. Still, it’s yet another box office blunder for the streamer who has tried to dip their toes into the theatrical landscape ever since Martin Scorsese‘s Killers of the Flower Moon. They do have a chance to do big with the upcoming Joseph Kosinski-directed F1, which will likely be one of the biggest theatrical events of 2025.

Meanwhile, Tamil filmmaker S. Shankar has released his first movie in over six years with Indian 2. After a troubled production of five years, the film has been a box office success both in India and in the United States, with a $2 million tally in 1,065 theatres, including select IMAX screens. However, the reviews were not great, so much so that the distributor agreed to cut 20 minutes out of the film after its release, reducing the runtime from 180 to 160 minutes.

This is a practice that has been done time and again in the Indian film industry, and it’s deeply disrespectful and anti-art. The movie may not be good, but it’s up to the audience to judge it based on the filmmaker’s vision, who has always made movies around the 3-hour range. To ask him to cut scenes from his film after the original version has been playing in cinemas, despite negative reviews, is a practice that should never happen and be normalized. Unfortunately, it’s all too common in Indian films and likely does not help the movie improve. In any event, Indian 3 will be released in 2025, alongside Shankar’s Telugu-language debut, Game Changer, starring RRR‘s Ram Charan, which will likely be a massive hit in India and North America.

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

1. Despicable Me 4 (Universal): $44.7M (-40%) – 4,449 theatres
2. Longlegs (NEON): $22.6M – 2,510 theatres
3. Inside Out 2 (Disney): $20.7M (-32%) – 3,815 theatres
4. A Quiet Place: Day One (Paramount): $11.8M (-43%) – 3,378 theatres
5. Fly Me to the Moon (Sony/Apple TV+): $10.0M – 3,356 theatres
6. Bad Boys: Ride or Die (Sony): $4.4M (-34%) – 2,200 theatres
7. Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1 (Warner Bros): $2.4M (-54%) – 2,587 theatres
8. MaXXXine (A24): $2.1M (-69%) – 2,370 theatres
9. Indian 2 (Lyca Productions): $2.0M – 1,065 theatres
10. Sound of Hope: The Possum Trot Story (Angel Studios): $1.3M (-56%) – 2,137 theatres

Source: Comscore