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Incredibles 2 family shot.jpg

Box Office Report: An Incredible Opening Weekend, But Not For Jeremy Renner

By Kayleigh Donaldson | Film | June 17, 2018 |

By Kayleigh Donaldson | Film | June 17, 2018 |


Incredibles 2 family shot.jpg

I think we all expected Incredibles 2 to do well. Brad Bird’s superhero comedy is arguably one of Pixar’s finest, and after the flop of Tomorrowland, it made sense for Bird to run back to his home studio and sequalize his biggest hit in the same way Andrew Stanton did when John Carter was nothing short of a minor disaster. It didn’t hurt that Incredibles 2 was being released amid the new superhero age. Disney does love its sequels and corporate synergy. Still, I can’t say I was predicting an opening weekend this big or this record breaking. With an estimated $180m domestic opening weekend, the film soared past Finding Dory to become the largest opening day ever for an animated film. That opening weekend is the 8th largest ever as well. Want to be even more impressed? That opening weekend made more than last year’s live-action reboot of Beauty and the Beast, which went on to become the 2nd biggest movie of 2017. While Avengers: Infinity War seems all but destined to be the biggest film of 2018, don’t be surprised to see this one in the top 5 or even top 3. Its toughest competition for second place will be Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, which is doing gangbusters internationally, but we’ll talk about that next week.

In second place is Ocean’s 8, which fell over 50% in terms of gross but still made $19.5m, bringing its domestic gross to $79m from a budget of $70m. More impressively, it held off competition from the R-rated comedy Tag, which debuted at nuber 3 with around $14.6m. Reviews were meh but these numbers are about what Warner Bros. expected. It remains to be seen if it was worth paying all that money to CGI in Jeremy Renner’s arms.

We were expecting Hereditary to take a massive hit in its second week, given all the hullabaloo about audiences not liking the film as much as critics. It fell to number 6 with a 48% drop, but still brought in around $7m. That’s strong not only for a film like this but for A24. $27m from less than a fortnight on a film that’s proven so divisive is nothing to sneeze at. Bring on the Toni Collette Oscar campaign!

Doing less well is Superfly, the reboot of the classic blaxploitation film, which debuted at 7 with $6.3m. This could be a slow burner since audiences seem to love it, but with major competition coming over the next few days, it could struggle to stay afloat.

Some good news for A Wrinkle in Time fans: The film passed $100m domestically! Disney gave it a little boost with an extra 88 cinemas over the week and that brought in $1.7m. Has it broken even? Alas, not even close, but it means a lot to see Disney at least give it this much in its final theatrical days.

Gotti, the John Gotti biopic starring John Travolta, directed by E from Entourage, with music from Pitbull… Is a real movie, apparently. It was originally going to be a VOD release, but somehow Travolta managed to get it an international premiere AT CANNES! Anyway, it made $1.67m from 503 cinemas, debuting at number 12. That’s bad, but didn’t we expect bad?

Race 3, a Bollywood release, made almost the same amount of money from about 175 less locations, which highlights an oft-overlooked domestic market.

Won’t You Be My Neighbor? continues an amazing 2018 hot streak for documentaries, expanding to 96 theatres and grossing a whopping $985k. That’s averaging over $10k per theatre! Look out for this and RBG for Oscar front-runners.

Eating Animals, a documentary narrated by Natalie Portman, opened in two theatres and grossed over $35k. I don’t have much in the way of opinions on the film but hey, remember that rumour that Jonathan Safran Foer, who wrote the book it’s based on, left his wife for Portman without telling her and she was so not into it?! Ah, nothing like high-brow gossip to lift one’s mood.

This week sees the release of Jurassic Park: Fallen Kingdom, which will probably be the 2nd or 3rd biggest film of the year. Put on your high heels and start crying now, ladies!

You can check out the rest of the weekend box office here.

What films did you watch this week? What’s your favourite Pixar film? Who should join the team for Ocean’s 9? What limbs would you CGI onto Jeremy Renner? No seriously, is Gotti a real movie? Answers in the comments.