The summer movie season is well and truly here, and box office watchers are primed. Last week, Joseph Kosinski’s racing movie F1 dropped. This week, it is Jurassic World: Rebirth before we all get to argue about Superman and pretend we didn’t watch The Fantastic Four: First Steps, or were only dragged to the theater because the kids wanted to see it.
Summer used to be a magical time to be a movie fan. Blockbuster after blockbuster landed in theaters, theaters that would become our prime hangout for all of the summer. From May through August, our prime source of nutrition was popcorn, and we drank so much soda that our pee was carbonated.
When did that all end? When did we become so jaded and cynical? Did we do this to ourselves, or did movies do this to us? Now I am all wistful and nostalgic when I should be talking about the weekend box office.
The Brad Pitt-led racing drama took top spot at the box office both domestically and overseas. It is looking at $56 million domestic and $88 million worldwide for a weekend total of $144 million. With good critical scores across aggregator sites, it is connecting with audiences and critics alike. It may have legs.
Next week is a holiday weekend, and it will face competition from Jurassic World: Rebirth.
Second was How To Train Your Dragon with $19.4 million and a worldwide take climbing upwards towards the $500 million mark, which it may cross this week. Pixar’s Elio continued their apparent slump with a $10.2 million take, and barely $72 million overall globally in total.
The big news was M3GAN 2.0, which just died. It came fourth with $10.2 million, a far cry from the performance of the first movie.
28 Years Later suffered a fall of 68% in its second weekend, with $10 million and fifth place, taking it past the $100 million mark.
