The Spool / Box Office Report
Box Office Report: “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” Has Glitzy Opening
While "The Lion King" dropped like Mufasa off a cliff in its second weekend, "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" kicked off Tarantino's biggest opening.
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While The Lion King dropped like Mufasa off a cliff in its second weekend, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood kicked off Tarantino’s biggest opening.

In the domestic box office, the bustling domestic box office, The Lion King reigns tonight. Jon Favreau’s newest directorial effort topped the box office again but did suffer a 60% drop from its opening weekend. That’s a considerably larger second-weekend decline than the ones seen by fellow Disney remakes Aladdin or Beauty and the Beast. That’s not great news for its long-term box office prospects but it’s also not a disastrous turn of events for a number of reasons. Chief among them is that it still took in another hefty $75.5 million this frame for a massive 10-day domestic total of $350.7 million.

It’s also worth noting that family-skewing titles opening in July tend to have bigger second-weekend drops simply because their target audience can see them during the week, they don’t just have to wait for the weekend. Notice how the only three Marvel Cinematic Universe movies to drop 60+% in their second weekend all opened in July. So while this is a larger-than-expected drop, it’s also not entirely unprecedented. 

Still, this drop is an indicator that The Lion King isn’t generating particularly special word-of-mouth which means it’ll likely get to a final domestic total of $500-520 million. That would still be a gargantuan sum above all other current 2019 titles domestically save for Avengers: Endgame. 

In second place was Once Upon a Time In Hollywood, which got off to a great start of $40.3 million. That’s the biggest opening weekend ever for a Quentin Tarantino picture, 6% ahead of the opening weekend of Inglourious Basterds from ten years ago. This is also the fourth-biggest opening weekend ever for Leonardo DiCaprio and provides Sony/Columbia with their first big drama hit in ages. 

This summer has seen a number of non-blockbusters titles go belly-up financially but Hollywood managed to buck that trend thanks to a combination of big-name stars in the types of roles audiences like to see them in and the overall positive association general audiences have with Tarantino movies. At the very least, Hollywood should score $105 million domestically in the long run.

In its third weekend of release, Spider-Man: Far From Home dropped another 40% to gross an additional $12.2 million for a domestic gross of $344.4 million, putting it past the $334.4 million domestic haul of Spider-Man: Homecoming. Having crossed $1 billion worldwide during the week, Far From Home is now the biggest Spider-Man movie of all-time worldwide and only the second Sony/Columbia title ever (following Skyfall) to crack $1 billion worldwide. 

Toy Story 4 dropped just 36% this weekend for a sixth-weekend gross of $9.8 million for a domestic gross of $395.6 million. It’ll become only the thirty-sixth movie in history to cross $400 million domestically sometime this week. Rounding out the top five was Crawl, which dipped just 34% this weekend for another $4 million and a domestic gross of $31.4 million. Such a tiny third-weekend decline indicates this crocodile horror film is generating solid word-of-mouth, maybe it’ll even finish its domestic total just a hair above $40 million.

Yesterday dropped 40% this frame to add $4 million to a domestic cume that now stands at $63.3 million. Meanwhile, Aladdin surpassed $1 billion worldwide during the week and this sleeper hit kept on chugging over this weekend as well with the smallest weekend-to-weekend drop in the top twelve. Easing only 31%, Aladdin took in another $2.7 million and bringing its domestic gross to $345.9 million. 

Holding far worse this weekend was Stuber, which dropped 59% for a third-weekend gross of only $1.6 million for a $20.1 million domestic haul while Annabelle Comes Home added another $1.56 million for a domestic gross of $69.7 million. While it’ll still be the lowest-grossing Conjuring movie by a notable margin, at least Annabelle Comes Home appears to be headed for a final domestic gross now too far off from the $84.7 million domestic haul of the first Annabelle movie.

Rounding out the top ten was The Farewell, which continued to score impressive box office as it expanded into 135 locations and grossed $1.55 million for a per-theater average of $11,510 and a current domestic total of $3.68 million. The Farewell seems poised to do some strong business when it expands into wide release on Friday. Lowering its theater count to 580 locations this frame means Avengers: Endgame is no longer in wide release for the first time in its theatrical domestic release. It grossed $824,000 for a per-theater average of $1,421 and a domestic gross of $856.4 million.

Midsommar dropped another 55% this weekend for a fourth-weekend gross of $720,775 and a domestic gross of $24.2 million, putting it on track to become only the sixth A24 movie to cross $25 million domestically. The Art of Self-Defense fell a steep 71% this weekend for a third-weekend gross of $311,317 from 541 locations for a per-theater average of $575 and a domestic gross of $2.05 million. 

Honeyland opened to $29,999 this weekend at 2 locations for a per-theater average of $15,000, Mike Wallace Is Here opened to $19,500 from 3 locations for a per-theater average of $6,500 and The Mountain debuted to $16,013 at 2 locations for a per-theater average of $8,007. No word yet on how limited release newcomer Skin fared on opening weekend while there’s also no box office figures yet for Booksmart, which went back into over 500 locations this weekend.

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The top twelve movies this weekend grossed a total of $154.2 million, up 6% from this same weekend last year when Mission: Impossible – Fallout topped the box office. July 2019s monthly gross has now hit just over $1.225 billion, already surpassing the entire monthly grosses for July in 2018 and 2017. 

Though it’s likely to come in behind six other prior Julys in terms of total monthly domestic gross, July 2019 still provided a solid jolt of life to the 2019 domestic box office. A greater variety of titles ranging from blockbuster superhero films to animated family movie tentpoles to period piece dramas and even a pair of R-rated horror movies doing decent business were a big reason for this. When there’s a lot of different types of product in the domestic box office marketplace, well, the box office itself tends to flourish.

One final note: as pointed out by Exhibitor Relations on Twitter,  Disney has already scored their biggest ever global yearly box office haul with $7.67 billion before July 2019 is ever over. That’s what happens when Avengers: Endgame, The Lion King, Toy Story 4, Aladdin and Captain Marvel are all contributing to your bottom line. 

One can’t help but wonder if, with Frozen II and Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker on the way, Disney might end up becoming the first movie studio in history to cross $10 billion worldwide in a single year.