Box Office Report for the Week of August 10

This weekend marks another big win for Warner Bros. and for original films, with Zach Cregger‘s Weapons overperforming expectations and opening at $42.5 million domestically, for a global result of over $70 million. Do audiences crave horror movies or inventive original cinema? How about both!

In any event, the marketing shrouding the film in secrecy and positive word of mouth definitely helped bolster excitement for Weapons, which now makes Warner Bros the first studio in film history to score $ 40 million+ openings for six consecutive films, with A Minecraft Movie ($162.8M), Sinners ($48M), Final Destination Bloodlines ($51.6M), F1 the Movie ($57M), and Superman ($125M).

To think that David Zaslav was about to fire both Michael De Luca and Pam Abdy, until Minecraft became the gargantuan hit it became, and a streak of successes for the studio was unleashed. Another example (among many) that he still has no idea what he’s doing, but it is great to see many of their films perform relatively well after a period of high turbulence from the studio. Time will tell how big The Conjuring: Last Rites and One Battle After Another will perform, though one will be more positioned as an awards contender than the other is vying to be a genuine hit, as it is the latest installment in a long-running (and lucrative) horror franchise.

In other news, Freakier Friday has opened relatively big for a mid-budget Disney offering, as it marks the official comeback for Lindsay Lohan on the big screen after a string of direct-to-Netflix romantic comedies. The film has made $29 million domestically, with a global tally of $44.5 million, already making its $42 million budget back in a weekend. While I’ve always enjoyed Lohan’s earlier Disney films, I didn’t realize how much people were anticipating her significant screen return until I attended an advanced screening of the film at a cinema just 15 minutes from my house. The room turned into a total rock concert of uproarious laughter and applause.

Right then and there, it’s pretty clear that if my small-town community were cheering at the sight of Lohan on the big screen again after so long, then the sequel would undoubtedly become successful, and it looks like it’s going to do just that…

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

1. Weapons (Warner Bros): $42.5M – 3,202 theatres
2. Freakier Friday (Disney): $29.0M – 3,975 theatres
3. The Fantastic Four: First Steps (Disney): $15.5M (-59.9%) – 3,600 theatres
4. The Bad Guys 2 (Universal): $10.4M (-52.7%) – 3,860 theatres
5. The Naked Gun (Paramount): $8.3M (-50.1%) – 3,363 theatres
6. Superman (Warner Bros): $7.8M (-43%) – 2,920 theatres
7. Jurassic World Rebirth (Universal): $4.7M (-46.3%) – 2,691 theatres
8. F1 the Movie (Warner Bros/Apple TV+): $2.8M(-32.1%) – 1,351 theatres
9. Together (NEON): $2.6M (-61.5%) – 2,225 theatres
10. Sketch (Angel Studios): $2.5M – 2,157 theatres

Source: Comscore