The box office performance of Spider-Man: Far From Home helps drag a slower movie summer out of its funk, while Toy Story 4 keeps Pixar chugging along.
The Summer 2019 box office has been in a funk recently, so leave it up to a new Marvel Cinematic Universe to energize things profoundly. Spider-Man: Far From Home grossed $93.6 million over the three-day Friday-to-Sunday weekend, down 21% from the three-day weekend of Spider-Man: Homecoming. That would normally be an issue, except Far From Home, unlike Homecoming, burned off demand with a pre-weekend launch. The film’s actually been playing since Tuesday, which means it’s generated a massive $185 million over its first six days of release, only slightly behind the six-day cume of Captain Marvel. It’s also the sixth-biggest opening weekend ever for a movie that didn’t debut on a Friday.
Even better for Far From Home’s long-term prospects is that it’s not a frontloaded title. Instead of making 50% of its six-day gross from just its opening day, it’s managed to be a steady performer without any major day-to-day drops to signal audience dissatisfaction. There isn’t another PG-13 tentpole blockbuster for a whole month, so the road ahead for Far From Home looks to be pretty solid. At the very least, it looks like it should be able to crack $350 million domestically. Depending on how well it holds in the face of The Lion King, the sky could be the limit for this spandex-clad wall-crawler.
Oh, also worth mentioning that Far From Home has already hit $580 million worldwide after just ten days of release, so it’s a foregone conclusion that this title will crack $1 billion worldwide. That would make Far From Home the first solo Spider-Man movie to crack $1 billion worldwide and the third 2019 Marvel Studios title to cross that threshold.
It’s a frequent occurrence for sequels to open ahead of their predecessors but subsequently have harsher weekend-to-weekend falls. So kudos to Toy Story 4 for continuing to have a larger weekend haul than Toy Story 3 into its third weekend of release, dipping just 43% this week to gross another $34.3 million, for a $306.5 million domestic total. As long as it doesn’t get totally capsized by Lion King in two weeks, it feels like a sure thing that Toy Story 4 will become only the seventh animated movie in history to cross $400 million domestically.
In third place, Yesterday proved it was no one-weekend wonder with only a 37% dip this weekend and a second-weekend haul of $10.7 million. Having grossed $36.8 million after ten days of release, it looks like Yesterday will finish its domestic haul in the $60 and $65 million range at the very least.
Annabelle Comes Home dropped 52% in its second frame to add $9.7 million to a domestic haul that now stands at $50.1 million. It looks like Annabelle’s newest movie is headed for a final domestic total between $65 and $70 million.
Aladdin continued its impressive streak of tiny weekend-to-weekend drops by dipping only 25% this weekend for a seventh-weekend gross of $7.6 million and a domestic total just north of $320.7 million.
For the fourth year in a row, A24 launched a horror movie into wide release. This year’s entry is Midsommar, which opened to $6.5 million over the three-day weekend and $10.8 over its first five days of release. Midsommar is clearly not as big of a sleeper hit as last year’s Hereditary, but it’s still a fine debut for a cheap horror film that was never aimed at mainstream sensibilities. It does continue an odd streak this summer of horror films, even ones attached to the Conjuring franchise, failing to break out at the box office. Let’s see next weekend if crocodile horror film Crawl can break that streak.
The Secret Life of Pets 2 dipped just 35% this weekend for a fifth-weekend gross of $4.7 million and a domestic gross of $140.7 million while Men in Black: International fell 45% to gross another $$3.6 million for a domestic haul of $71.9 million.
Avengers: Endgame spent its tenth non-consecutive weekend in the top ten this weekend as it grossed another $3.1 million (a 49% drop from last weekend) for a massive domestic total of $847.8 million.
Rounding out the top ten was Rocketman, which dipped just 29% this weekend to add another $2.7 million for a domestic haul of $89.1 million. It’ll be interesting to see if Rocketman can get another $10.9 million and manage to crack $100 million domestically.
Pavarotti dipped only 15% this frame to add $470,000 for a domestic gross of $2.9 million. Despite having been out since Memorial Day weekend, Echo in the Canyon had its fifth consecutive weekend-to-weekend increase for its biggest weekend yet. Taking in another $336,132, Echo in the Canyon has now grossed $2 million domestically and doesn’t appear to be slowing down any time soon. Expanding into 188 locations this weekend, The Last Black Man in San Francisco grossed $476,354 from 188 locations for a per-theater average of $2,533 for a domestic gross of $2.79 million.
Wild Rose’s first two weekends of limited release have been a rough journey, but expanding into 63 theaters saw the title gross $209,000 for a per-theater average of $3,317. That’s not an amazing gross but it is only a 5% dip in its per-theater average from last weekend despite nearly quadrupling its theater count. Perhaps NEON can expand this one’s theater count a little bit further yet. Finally, Marianne & Leonard: Words of Love debuted in 4 locations this weekend and managed to open to $44,311 for a per-theater average of $11,078.
The top 12 movies this weekend grossed a total of $180.5 million, slightly ahead of this same weekend last year when Ant-Man and the Wasp topped the box office.