Box Office Report for the Week of August 25

After a relatively exciting past few weeks with hit after hit, it was a relatively quiet weekend at the movies, with Deadpool & Wolverine reclaiming the top spot over Alien: Romulus with an $18.3 million tally. It may not outpace the total domestic gross of Inside Out 2, but the film has already made history as the highest-grossing R-rated production of all time. Its job is pretty much done, and has hopefully reinvigorated interest in the Marvel Cinematic Universe after a year the studio would likely forget.

Though it’s been an excellent summer for Disney, especially after their abysmal 2023, one can’t say the same for Lionsgate, who has released two successive flops with Borderlands, and now their reimagining of The Crow. The movie couldn’t even beat the 15th-anniversary re-release of Coraline, which is in its second weekend, with a dismal $4.6 million tally in over 2,700 theatres, including Premium Large Format and IMAX.

While I surprisingly enjoyed the reimagining, the reviews have not been so kind over Rupert Sanders‘ $50 million reboot of James O’Barr‘s classic comic series. Like Borderlands, the price tag is essential, because the movie will not make its money back in cinemas and will likely flop even harder with its second weekend, where studios dump the worst movies of the year before the fall movie season begins.

Hell, The Forge, a faith-based film, did much better in fewer venues, with a $6.6 million tally in 1,800 theatres. Zoë Kravitz’s directorial debut, Blink Twice, also did pretty well, with a $7.3 million tally domestically and $14 million in total. With a budget of $20 million, the movie will turn a profit, even if Amazon isn’t necessarily looking at the figures made by its theatrical release.

It’s funny how much the landscape has changed regarding movies. Before, January was considered a dump month, but quality productions were released since the advent of COVID during these months. Now, August is a true dump month, where most films that won’t have a chance of performing well critically and commercially are released. Next week doesn’t inspire much confidence either, with the horror film AfraAId being the biggest release of the weekend, with little to no fanfare of a marketing campaign and being unceremoniously dumped in cinemas. That’s not great, but we have so many anticipated movies this fall to look forward to this year. Keep an eye out on Awards Radar as the fall movie season begins to ramp up very soon!

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

1. Deadpool & Wolverine (Disney): $18.3M (-39%) – 3,840 theatres
2. Alien: Romulus (Disney): $16.2M (-61%) – 3,915 theatres
3. It Ends with Us (Sony): $11.9M (-50%) – 3,839 theatres
4. Blink Twice (Amazon MGM Studios): $7.3M – 3,067 theatres
5. The Forge (Sony): $6.6M – 1,818 theatres
6. Twisters (Universal): $6.2M (-38%) – 3,206 theatres
7. Coraline (Fathom Events): $5.0M (-47%) – 1,472 theatres
8. The Crow (Lionsgate): $4.6M – 2,752 theatres
9. Despicable Me 4 (Universal): $4.4M (-30%) – 2,591 theatres
10. Inside Out 2 (Disney): $2.0M (-39%) – 1,560 theatres

Source: Comscore