Theaters always love when polling and experts are wrong. Don’t we all? Such held true this weekend with another film getting sequelized after nearly three decades, and the nostalgic appeal of those VHS rewinds and cable viewings carried over. This just a week before one of the biggest films of the summer is about to open, and while the international numbers are not nearly as triumphant as the domestic, one of the questions that lingers is whether Twisters will last like the original back in 1996 or become this year’s Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning?
King of the Crop: Twisters Touches Down with $80 Million Debut
Twisters politely asked other films to move this weekend to give it room to take the top spot at the box office. There’s no mincing words here: it’s incredible that the film, directed by Lee Isaac Chung and tracking for around a $50 million start, opened to $80 million. That’s the seventh-best total for the third week in July, ahead of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince ($77.8 million), Inception ($62.7 million), Ant-Man ($57.2 million), and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory ($56.1 million). The original Twister, released 28 years ago in May 1996, opened to $41 million, which would be about double the amount in today’s dollars. Twisters nearly matched that with the third-biggest opening of the year in a summer looking for a fourth $200 million grosser. Surely the season will get that soon after next weekend, but how good are the odds of Twisters hitting that milestone as well?
Opening over $60 million already gave the film significantly better odds, as only four July releases to begin north of that have failed to reach $200 million. They include The Simpsons Movie, Tim Burton’s maligned 2001 remake of Planet of the Apes, one of Marvel’s intro films (Captain America: The First Avenger), and the same studio’s 2021 release of Black Widow during the pandemic. Black Widow and The Simpsons are the only two films to open over $70 million this month and not reach $200 million. Black Widow opened to $80.3 million and X-Men Origins: Wolverine is the only other summer release to have an $80+ million opening and not reach $200 million. Universal has to like those odds to recoup a section of the film’s costly budget, reported on the low side as $155 million and on the high side as $200 million.
However, it was about this time last year that Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning opened to $54.6 million nine days before running up against the cultural juggernaut that was Barbenheimer. Next week, Twisters faces off against this summer’s most anticipated film in the older kids’ realm, the 2-for-1 blockbuster known as Deadpool & Wolverine. How much will interest veer off while so many are flocking to that? Reviews are all over the map on Twisters, with most ultimately positive, and surveyed audiences gave it an A- Cinemascore – the same as the first film. The sequel/name recognition follow-up grossed only $42.7 million (including an early release last week) overseas and just $1.5 million in China. If $155 million is the actual production cost, we’re talking close to $400 million before the film starts turning a profit. It is not going to make all that here. The original grossed $494.5 million globally, which would be nearly a billion today.
The Top 10 and Beyond: Despicable Me 4 and Inside Out 2 Still Holding Strong
Universal did enjoy its own 1-2 punch this weekend with Twisters in first and Despicable Me 4 coming in second with $23.8 million in its third weekend. Now at just under $260 million, the latest in the franchise is still about $9-12 million behind the pace of the two Minions films after 19 days of release, though it did best Minions’ third weekend of $22.9 million, as well as Spider-Man: Homecoming’s $22.1 million, as it has climbed ahead of the pace of the latter. That puts the fourth film in the $340 million territory. Look for a domestic finish somewhere around there. Globally the film is over $574 million, making it the fifth film and third animated film this year to cross half a billion. Currently it is the third most profitable release of 2024 behind Kung Fu Panda 4. It will be second this week.
The most profitable film of the year (and nothing comes close) is Disney/Pixar’s Inside Out 2, which made another $12.8 million and is now just shy of becoming the 15th film to break the domestic line of $600 million — the fifth since 2020 and the pandemic. At $596.3 million, the film is $14 million off the overall pace of Jurassic World and roughly $4-5 million ahead of Barbie. The latter had a sixth weekend of $15.1 million, while the former added $11.4 million. Inside Out 2 is looking at landing in the $640 million domestic range, which would be good enough to be the tenth highest-grossing (first-run) release of all time here at home. At $1.443 billion, it has passed Avengers: Age of Ultron for 15th on the all-time worldwide list with $1.425 billion and is approaching Barbie ($1.445 billion), Frozen II ($1.453 billion – the highest-grossing animated film ever, not counting 2019’s The Lion King), and Top Gun: Maverick ($1.495 billion).
Down to fourth place is Neon’s little horror sensation, Longlegs. Oz Perkins’ film with Maika Monroe and Nicolas Cage fell back to $11.7 million, a decent fall of around 48%. With nearly $45 million in the bank, it is now well placed to eclipse the studio’s highest-grossing domestic title to date, Bong Joon Ho’s Oscar-winning Parasite ($53.3 million). Longlegs’ weekend is lower than most films opening in July surrounding a $45 million 10-day haul. The closest equivalent is The Lone Ranger’s $11.5 million second weekend, and if Longlegs manages to stay above that film’s massive falls back in 2013, it could be looking at around $70 million, a huge win for the $10 million production.
The top-grossing horror film of the year is in fifth place this week. A Quiet Place: Day One grossed $6.1 million and now holds a total of $127 million. While that is closely aligned with the 24-day totals of Grown Ups and The Heat, those films grossed between $9-10 million on weekend four. Day One’s weekend is closer to last year’s Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny ($6.67 million), but even then, Day One is still about $31 million off that pace. Ultimately it should end up in the $140-150 million region. Worldwide the film is over $240 million and is one of the year’s most profitable.
One of the least profitable films — and certainly looking like one of the year’s biggest losers — is Fly Me To The Moon. The Apple Original Films production released by Sony into theaters fell to just $3.3 million in its second weekend, down from a lackluster $9.4 million. The unfathomably budgeted $100 million production initially set for a streaming release has grossed just $16.3 million to date and $14.3 million globally. The Scarlett Johansson/Channing Tatum rom-com is destined to join Furiosa, The Fall Guy, and Horizon as the biggest money losers of 2024.
Back on the positive side involving Sony is Bad Boys: Ride or Die, coming in with $2.6 million to finish seventh in its seventh weekend. It is now making the slow walk towards $200 million, as it is slightly behind Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire’s pace. That film had $191.9 million at the end of its seventh weekend, where it also grossed $2.61 million. It ultimately finished with $196.3 million. Ride or Die could end up finishing in the $190+ million no man’s land that both The New Empire and Kung Fu Panda 4 fell into. That’s still a solid haul of over $380 million worldwide and a winner for the studio.
Kevin Costner’s Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1 dropped 69% in its fourth weekend to bring its total to just $28 million. Will we ever see Chapter 2 in theaters now, or will Warner Bros., bury it for another tax writeoff? The studio has had a bad summer with numbers for Furiosa, The Watchers, and this after starting the year well with Dune: Part Two and Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, two of the most profitable films of the year. As a result of its steep climb, Jeff Nichols’ The Bikeriders crept back into the top ten with $700,000, bringing its domestic total to $21.2 million, not nearly enough to cover its $40 million price tag.
Ti West’s MaXXXine lost over 1,300 theaters and fell to just $819,000 in its third weekend, bringing its total to $13.9 million. That makes it the highest-grossing entry in the trilogy, and it’s already well into profit territory. A24 also continued the platform run for Greg Kwedar’s Sing Sing this weekend instead of expanding it. The film about a theatrical production from men who are incarcerated grossed $64,000 in four theaters for a per-theater average of $16,021. The studio saw similar drops in their continued platform releases of Uncut Gems and The Whale, though each benefited from awards season hype and ultimately found greater audiences in expansion. Sing Sing has made $234,000 to date, and we’ll see how it rolls out in the weeks ahead. IFC tried a modest wide release for its horror film Oddity, and it grossed just $555,000 this weekend in 790 theaters. That’s a per-theater average of just $703. Not everything will be Late Night with the Devil. The Hindi comedy Bad Newz, meanwhile, grossed an estimated $1 million in 477 theaters.
On the Vine: Deadpool & Wolverine Arrive to… Save the MCU?
Reynolds & Jackman. Deadpool & Wolverine. The most hyped film of the summer (that was originally supposed to kick off the season pre-strikes) finally arrives to dominate the remainder of the season. The summer should easily have another $300 million film, but will it have its next $400 million title? It only needs $370.3 million to finally take the crown (without thorns) from The Passion of the Christ as the highest-grossing “R”-rated film ever. On the counterprogramming side, Focus Features, which has struggled this year to find an audience, has chosen THIS weekend to platform Sean Wang’s Didi, which won the Audience Award at this year’s Sundance film festival.
Full List of Box Office Results: July 19-21, 2024
77%
Twisters
(2024)
– $80.5 million ($80.5 million total)
-
55%
Despicable Me 4
(2024)
– $23.8 million ($259.4 million total)
-
91%
Inside Out 2
(2024)
– $12.8 million ($596.3 million total)
-
86%
Longlegs
(2024)
– $11.7 million ($44.6 million total)
-
87%
A Quiet Place: Day One
(2024)
– $6.1 million ($127.6 million total)
-
66%
Fly Me to the Moon
(2024)
– $3.3 million ($16.3 million total)
-
65%
Bad Boys: Ride or Die
(2024)
– $2.7 million ($189.3 million total)
25%
Bad Newz
(2024)
– $1 million ($1 million total)
-
73%
MaXXXine
(2024)
– $819,000 ($13.9 million total)
-
81%
The Bikeriders
(2023)
– $701,00 ($21.2 million total)
Erik Childress can be heard each week evaluating box office on Business First AM with Angela Miles and his Movie Madness Podcast.
[box office figures via Box Office Mojo]
Thumbnail image by Sue Gordon/©Universal Pictures
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