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How to Watch FX Live Without CableHow To Watch AMC Without CableHow to Watch ABC Without CableHow to Watch Paramount Network Without CableThe last big blockbuster of Summer 2019 arrived this weekend in the form of Hobbs & Shaw, which opened to $60.8 million. This is an alright opening weekend, but it’s far from an ideal bow for the $200 million budgeted title. It’s down 38% from the opening weekend from the last Fast & Furious movie, The Fate of the Furious, and the lowest-grossing opening weekend for a Fast & Furious movie since 2006s The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift.
To boot, its $120 million international opening was way down from the foreign box office debut of prior Fast & Furious movies. On a positive note, it was the sixth-biggest opening weekend ever for a movie released in August and the second-biggest 2019 opening weekend for a movie not affiliated with Disney (only fellow Universal title Us did better).
Why didn’t Hobbs & Shaw do better? Well, it was a movie entirely predicated on its two lead stars, Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham, but neither have ever been massive box office mega-stars. Jason Statham, for instance, has only one non-Fast & Furious movie (The Meg) that opened to over $40 million while Dwayne Johnson has only had one non-Fast & Furious movie (San Andreas) open to over $50 million. To be fair to both of them, it’s not at all unusual for one big franchise to be where a movie star gets the majority of their biggest opening weekends (Tom Cruise only has had one non-Mission: Impossible movie open to over $40 million) but it does mean a movie like Hobbs & Shaw, whose marketing was entirely focused on its two leads, did have a ceiling in terms of how high it could go.
The good news for Hobbs & Shaw is that August blockbusters tend to hold very well. Statham’s own The Meg ended up with a domestic gross that was 3.2 times its opening weekend last year while the last two Mission: Impossible movies (which made the majority of their money in August) each did more than 3.5 times their opening weekend in their overall domestic hauls. Given that Hobbs & Shaw actually held quite well on a day-to-day basis over the weekend, it wouldn’t be shocking to see it get to at least $175-180 million domestically.
The Lion King had another 50% weekend-to-weekend drop this frame, cementing this one as a more frontloaded production than fellow Disney remakes. No matter, it still grossed another $38.4 million for a $430.8 million domestic haul and a worldwide box office gross just under $1.2 billion. In third place was Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, which dropped 50% (on par with the 49% second-weekend decline of Inglorious Basterds) to gross another $20 million for a ten-day domestic haul of $78.8 million.
Despite the presence of a new PG-13 blockbuster, Spider-Man: Far From Home kept on chugging with a 37% fifth-weekend dip, giving it another $7.7 million for a domestic gross of $360.3 million. Also holding well this weekend was Toy Story 4, which grossed $7.1 million, a 31% dip from last weekend, for a domestic haul of $410 million while Yesterday eased a mere 20% for a sixth-weekend gross of $2.44 million and a domestic gross of $67.9 million.
And now we come to The Farewell, which managed to become the seventh-biggest movie domestically this weekend despite playing in just 409 locations. Grossing a fantastic $2.42 million, The Farewell had a per-theater average of $5,939 and has now grossed $6.8 million. This means The Farewell is now the third-biggest movie of 2019 never to go into wide release after No Maches Frida 2 and Apollo 11. Needless to say, this is a phenomenal result that bodes quite well for how this title will hold in the weeks to come.
Crawl eased another 47% this weekend, allowing it to chomp off another $2.1 million for a $36 million domestic gross while Aladdin dipped just 33% to give it an eleventh-weekend gross of $2 million, bringing it to a massive $350.3 million domestic gross. Rounding out the top ten was Annabelle Comes Home, which dropped another 43% for another $875,000 and a domestic gross of $71.5 million. The Secret Life of Pets 2 dipped another 20% this frame for a ninth-weekend gross of $730,000 and a domestic gross of $155.4 million.
Losing 1,070 of its theaters this weekend, Stuber plummeted a hefty 71% for a fourth-weekend haul of $506,000 and a domestic gross of $21.7 million. Meanwhile, Midsommar actually fell out of wide release but still held alright with a 43% fifth-weekend drop. Grossing another $407,775, this Ari Aster horror film has now grossed $25.5 million. Maiden expanded into 131 locations and grossed $229,436 for a per-theater average of $1,751 for a domestic gross of $1.5 million.
Over in the world of limited releases, Luce kicked off its domestic run with $132,916 from 5 locations for a $26,583 per-theater average, the seventh-best opening weekend per-theater average for a 2019 limited release. Luce distributor NEON has struggled in releasing non-documentary that isn’t entitled I, Tonya, but maybe Luce will end up being an exception for the studio. Tel Aviv on Fire debuted to $50,987 from 11 locations for a per-theater average of $4,635 while The Nightingale opened to $40,082 from 2 locations for a per-theater average of $20,041.
Honeyland’s second weekend saw it gross $37,671 from 5 locations for a per-theater average of $7,534. Jay Myself opened to $19,088 from a single location while Them That Follow (only the second title from 1091, the new version of indie studio The Orchard) opened to $15,000 from 3 locations for an underwhelming per-theater average of $5,000. Finally, Love, Antosha opened to $7,150 from a single location.
The top 12 movies this weekend grossed a total of $145.1 million, one of the stronger hauls for a weekend at this time of the year and 15% ahead of this same weekend last year when Mission: Impossible- Fallout topped the box office for a second time. Hobbs & Shaw was the only really big tentpole of August 2019, so it’s basically impossible for the month to come anywhere near the biggest August of all-time at the domestic box office, August 2016.
2019’s domestic box office has been getting better in recent weeks (2019 is only behind 2018 at the same point by 6%, a considerable improvement from even two months ago), but if it’s gonna keep up that pace, it’s gonna need some more hits in August 2019, a month populated with titles like The Kitchen, Blinded by the Light and Dora and the Lost City of Gold that could really go either way financially.