Summer Box Office Sees $3.6 Billion, ‘Deadpool & Wolverine’ Crosses $600M

SUNDAY AM: Refresh for chart and more numbers…Nothing seismic going on in a traditional weak Labor Day weekend in regards to box office fluctuations, but we’ll leave you with this: Disney, together with its 20th Century Studios label, led summer 2024 (May 3-Labor Day) with $1.53 billion thanks to a comeback in brands Pixar with Inside Out 2 and MCU with Deadpool & Wolverine as well as its Fox brands of Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes and Alien: Romulus.

Universal was second, including Focus Features, with $754.6M built chiefly on the backs of Twisters and Despicable Me 4. True, Fall Guy didn’t fire off summer, and it was always meant to be off-season programming, but talk about getting blood from rock with $92.9M for that feathered fish off a $27.7M opening, a 3.3x multiple. That’s close to the same multiple of David Leitch’s last directed summer movie, Bullet Train.

Sony was second after firing off the summer streak back in early June with Bad Boys: Ride or Die, followed by its female romance renaissance, It Ends With Us. All, we count $514M for the studio including Sony Classics and Crunchyroll labels. The studio wasn’t without their failures as they swung for the fences with this weekend’s Blumhouse title Afraid ($4.4M 4-day), Harold and the Purple Crayon ($17M) and their distribution of Apple’s silly expensive $100M Fly Me to the Moon ($20.4M).

Paramount is next for the summer with $250M fueled by A Quiet Place: Day One ($138.9M) and If ($111.1M). No bombs for the Melrose lot which is about to get swallowed up by Skydance after that long summer dance. Triple note, Skydance, that the current motion picture administration in charge is super fine. No need to get an ego and turned it upside down when the factory is humming, capisce?

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SATURDAY AM: Here’s something worth celebrating in a summer that’s currently commanding 64% of the $5.6 billion year: Disney/Marvel’s Deadpool & Wolverine is bound to cross $600M by Labor Day. Estimates for the four-day are between $19M-$20M. Even on the low end, that gets the Shawn Levy directed/produced/co-written feature to that threshold.

Most of the newcomers aren’t making a mark dollar wise, however, Showbiz Direct’s Reagan landed an A CinemaScore and 4 1/2 stars on PostTrak. Current 4-day projection is $9M in 4th place at 2,754 locations after a $2.6M Friday. As expected, this movie is playing to the middle of the country with ICON Cinema in Edmond, OK the top grossing location so far this weekend with $10K. The South is also dominant for the Sean McNamara-directed movie. Men/women split is 51%/49% with a 77% definite recommend from audiences. Those over 35 years of age numbered 87% with the largest demo being the 55+ crowd at 63%. Caucasians numbered 78%, Latino and Hispanic were 13%, Black moviegoers were 1% of ticket buyers with others being 2%.

Reagan was financed by producer Mark Joseph and Rawhide Entertainment which ran the pic’s marketing. The pic was largely a distribution deal for Showbiz Direct. The movie had spots air on Fox News, and during the Republican and Democratic Conventions. There was also an on-the-ground push with political groups and a wrap-around car at Daytona Nascar recently, in addition to Quaid putting in appearances on right-wing demo shows, Joe Rogan and Laura Ingraham:

Sony/Blumhouse’s Afraid is disastrously low for the genre brand at $4M in 3,003 locations — but not as low as Blumhouse’s 2015 bomb Jem and the Holograms ($1.3M). John Cho had a niche cult hit in Sony/Screen Gem’s Searching which posted a 4-day of $7.6M and made a 3.4x multiple off of that for $26M with the studio making a sequel last year off the IP, Missing, which actually did better at $32.5M. However, nobody likes Afraid here at C+ CinemaScore, 26% Rotten with critics and PostTrak at 49%. At $12M, co-financed by Blumhouse, it’s a low bar, and likely penciled out for some sort of breakeven, but Sony is smart with their money: If the film doesn’t have the diagnostics to win at the box office, they’ll cut their P&A. Back in 2022, Sony had the penultimate summer vampire movie, The Invitation, which opened to $6.8M and legged out to $25M. Insiders at the Culver City lot told me at the time that that the low-grossing title was profitable for them. Men at 56% showed up while 56% of the audience was between 18-34 and 25-34 year olds were the biggest demo at 32%. Diversity demos were 43% Caucasian, 28% Latino and Hispanic, 14% Black, 10% Asian & 4% Native American/Other. Afraid‘s ticket sales were in the East, West and South with the Regal LA Live the best venue for the pic with just under $5k in gross so far (eek).

Social media reach across TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook and X for Afraid is 103M, per RelishMix, which is 25% behind horror norms before opening weekend — and that’s with Cho having an online reach to half million fans.

In regard to bad word of mouth, RelishMix says, “Negative-leaning convo for Afraid has viewers critiquing what they interpret as another tossed-off horror flick with nothing interesting to say about artificial intelligence. ‘A predictable story, with the only mystery being the AI’s real appearance and origin,’ and ‘Looks cool, but I’ll be honest it’s nothing new another AI movie.’ Blumhouse’s involvement has turned some fans away after a run of missteps.”

In a first, Sight & Sound broadcasted live in movie theaters, the original stage production Daniel based on the Biblical story. Fathom says last night grossed $538K for what’s shaping up to be a $2.5M 4-day outside the top ten. Solid numbers I’m told in Oklahoma City, Cleveland, NYC, DC and Pittsburgh.

Roadside Attractions’ political border story movie City of Dreams is looking at $1.5M over four at 774 theaters. The movie gets an A CinemaScore. I hear there’s alright sales in NYC, LA, Dallas, San Francisco and Austin, but that’s it.

Lionsgate Premiere Releasing’s Ray Liotta crime thriller 1992 fell flat at 875 sites with an estimated $1.2M four-day.

1.) Deadpool & Wolverine (Dis) 3,630 (-210) theaters, Fri $3.6M (-26%), 3-day $15.7M (-14%) 4-day $19M-$20M, Total $603.3M-$604.3M/Wk 6

2.) Alien: Romulus (20th/Dis) 3,120 (-795) theaters, Fri $2.2M (-51%) 3-day $9M (-45%), 4-day $11.75M Total $91.1M/Wk 3

3.) It Ends With Us (Sony) 3,551 (-288) theaters, Fri $2.1M (-45%) 3-day $7.35M (-37%), 4-day $9.5M Total $135.7M/Wk 4

4.) Reagan (Showbiz) 2,754 theaters, Fri $2.6M 3-day $7.2M 4-day $9M/Wk 1

5.) Twisters (Uni/WB) 3,005 (-201) theaters, $1.8M (+6%) 3-day $6.6M (+8%), 4-day $8.1M Total $258.9M/Wk 7

6.) Blink Twice (AMZ MGM) 3,067 theaters, Fri $1.3M (-54%), 3-day $5.2M (-28%) 4-day $6.6M, Total $17.3M/Wk 2

7.) The Forge (Sony) 1,921 (+103) theaters, Fri $1.1M 3-day $4.5M (-32%), 4-day $6.2M, Total $15.9M/Wk 2

8.) Despicable Me 4 (Uni) 2,698 (+107) theaters, Fri $850K (-20%) 3-day $3.67M (-14%), 4-day $5M Total $355M/Wk 9

9.) Afraid (Sony) 3,003 theaters, Fri $1.1m 3-day $3.2M, 4-day $4M/Wk 1

9..) Coraline (Fath) 1,168 (-354) theaters, Fri $708K (-49%) 3-day $3M (-40%), 4-day $4M, Total $30.2M/Wk 3

FRIDAY AM: In what is arguably tradition, the Labor Day weekend is going to be slow this year, moving this summer to a projected $3.6 billion total per Comscore, and that’s because the studios decided to play it that way. Summer’s take is roughly half billion lighter than summer 2023’s $4.09 billion, and that more or less boils down to a Marvel movie missing from the May calendar (Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 racking up $359M last summer).

Sony decided to push their R-rated Marvel movie, Kraven the Hunter, out of the four-day slot and into December to capitalize on the year-end moviegoing multiple. Fair and smart. In its place, they have the $12M PG-13 Blumhouse John Cho starring, Chris Weitz directed Afraid, which did $400k in previews (off showtimes that started at 4PM) and is projected to do around $5M for the 4-day weekend.

In Afraid, Curtis (Cho) and his family are selected to test a revolutionary new home device: a digital family assistant called AIA. Once the unit and all its sensors and cameras are installed in their home, AIA seems able to do it all. She learns the family’s behaviors and begins to anticipate their needs. And she can make sure nothing – and no one – gets in her family’s way. The pic was originally titled They Listen, and the studio opted to change titles, not because test audiences weren’t listening to that title, rather they wanted to play up the ‘AI’ which is italicized in the title.

Disney/Marvel Studios’ Deadpool & Wolverine will close out summer’s finale with $12M-$14M over 4-days for its 5th No. 1 this season, Disney’s tenth No. 1 for the 18-weekend season stretch. The movie at this point in time isn’t expected to hit the six-century mark at the domestic box office just yet, but it’s going to try. D&W is getting some Premium screen support, sharing most of the IMAX/PLF footprint with Alien: Romulus. This will allow exhibition to mix and match to make the best of both top titles, theatre by theatre. Inside Out 2 is also back in over 2,600 theatres; the Pixar Labor Day bringback tradition still alive and well. That pic prevails as 2024’s and summer’s top grossing title at $647.2M. D&W won the week with $25.4M, a $1.6M Thursday and a running total through yesterday of $584.3M.

Another wide opener this weekend is Showbiz Direct’s biopic Reagan about the 40th President starring Dennis Quaid in the title role. It did $525k last night. Pic has an outstanding 98% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. Projections for the weekend are in the single digits, but the distrib hopes that Middle America turns out and gets this into double digits over the four days. Critics aren’t electing Reagan as a great movie with a 25% RT score.

Also on marquees this weekend is Bleecker Street’s Casey Affleck and Laurence Fishburne psychological thriller Slingshot at 845 locations. Pic follows an elite trio of astronauts aboard a years-long, possibly compromised mission to Saturn’s moon Titan. As the team gears up for a highly dangerous slingshot maneuver that will either catapult them to Titan or into deep space, it becomes increasingly difficult for one astronaut to maintain his grip on reality.

Lionsgate in 800 locations has one of Ray Liotta’s final movies, 1992, which also stars Tyrese Gibson and Scott Eastwood. Action thriller follows a shopkeeper who must save his son from an angry mob during the 1992 L.A. uprising after the Rodney King verdict. Pic is 70% fresh with critics on RT.

Roadside Attractions has in 774 locations the political hot-button border crisis movie, City of Dreams about a boy whose dreams of becoming a soccer star are shattered when he’s smuggled from Mexico and sold to a sweatshop in downtown Los Angeles. Tons of celebrities put their names on this movie as EPs including Sylvester Stallone, Martin Sheen, Kathie Lee Gifford, Riverdale star Marisol Nichols, political leader Vivek Ramaswamy, and actress/producer Colleen Camp. Twelve reviews have this Mohit Ramchandani written and directed drama at 75% fresh on RT.