Sunday, June 30, 2019

Toy Story 4 Rules The Box Office Playground Again As Annabelle Comes Home Delivers Conjuring Series Lows And Yesterday Hits A High Note

Per usual for a PIXAR summertime sequel, Toy Story 4 reigned over the domestic box office for a second weekend in a row. Grossing another $57.9 million this weekend, Toy Story 4 fell 52% from its opening weekend, slightly better than the 56% second-weekend drop of Incredibles 2 from last year and roughly on par with the $59 million second-weekend gross of Toy Story 3 from nine years ago. Toy Story 4 has grossed $236.9  million in ten days of domestic release, putting it just behind the lifetime domestic gross of Brave ($237.2 million) and is slated to surpass the lifetime domestic gross of Toy Story 2 sometime this week. Now the question becomes can it beat Toy Story 3's $415 million domestic haul? It's still running about 5% ahead of Toy Story 3 in terms of overall domestic box office at the same point, but it's already having smaller weekend grosses. I say it's a coin toss at this point.



After non-stop financial success over the last few years, those Conjuring movies finally hit a financial speed bump with Annabelle Comes Home, though it still took in $20.3 million over the three-day weekend and $31.2 million over its first five days of release. This makes it the first Conjuring movie to gross under $30 million in its first three-day opening weekend and puts Annabelle Comes Home's five-day opening gross behind the three-day opening weekend of Annabelle: Creation. This new Annabelle movie cost only $27 million to make, so at least it won't be losing gobs of money for all involved, and it's likely it won't up exceedingly far behind the overall domestic hauls for prior Conjuring movies. Still, it is surprising to see the Conjuring series so suddenly fall off in domestic box office prowess just nine months after The Nun grossed over $365 million worldwide.

Fellow new wide release Yesterday grossed $17 million over its opening weekend, ahead of the $15.6 million bow of The Beach to become the biggest opening weekend ever for Danny Boyle. It's also one of the first smaller-scale box office hits in a summer box office that's been full of big-budget misfires. In Yesterday, we find a great example of why more lower-budget offerings (Yesterday only carried a $26 million pricetag) are vital, this will end up being a much more profitable outing for Universal/Working Title than more expensive tentpoles like Dark Phoenix or Men in Black International despite Yesterday not being based on any previously existing source material. With positive audience word-of-mouth and an extended holiday week coming up, Yesterday seems poised to stick around at the domestic box office.

In its sixth weekend of release, Aladdin will not stop showing people a whole new world. For the third consecutive weekend, Aladdin had a sub-30% weekend-to-weekend drop as it dipped just 29% this weekend to add $9.3 million to a massive domestic haul of $305.8 million. Remember when I thought this was gonna be a major underperformer and now it's one of the biggest domestic grossers of the last few years? Shows what I know. Rounding out the top five, The Secret Life of Pets 2 dipped 32% to gross another $7 million for a domestic gross of $131.2 million. Looks like this newest Illumination feature should be able to narrowly crack $150 million domestically. With no new blockbuster competition to face, Men in Black International fell 38% this weekend for a third-weekend gross of $6.5 million and a 17-day domestic gross of $65 million.

Avengers: Endgame went back into 2,025 locations this weekend and grossed a great $5.5 million, a whopping 178% increase from last weekend. Endgame has now grossed $841.3 million domestically and should be able to get past $850 million domestically by the end of its run. This thing just might end up making some profit after all. Child's Play may have thought opening against Toy Story 4 was a clever move but opening one week before a new Annabelle movie was not. The presence of a new killer doll horror movie sent Chucky's new film plummetting 69% for a second-weekend gross of $4.2 million and a $23.4 million domestic total. Meanwhile, Rocketman had yet another great weekend-to-weekend hold, dipping just 31% to gross another $3.8 million for an $84 million domestic total. Rounding out the top ten this weekend was John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum, which dipped only 22% this weekend for an eighth-weekend gross of $3.1 million for a domestic total of $161.2 million.

Moving on beyond the top ten, Godzilla: King of the Monsters fell 47% in its fifth frame as it grossed another $2 million for a $106.5 million domestic total. Dark Phoenix fell another 52% for a fourth-weekend gross of just $1.69 million and a domestic gross of $63.5 million. Dumbo had an inexplicable massive jump up from last weekend this frame. Did it get attached to drive-in screenings of Toy Story 4 or something? Whatever the reason, Dumbo grossed $1.69 million this weekend from just 120 locations for a per-theater average of $14,100, though its domestic gross still stands at an unremarkable $115.5 million. Next, Anna grossed just $1.4 million this weekend, a 60% fall from opening weekend, for a ten-day domestic total of only $6.6 million. Shaft dropped 59% this weekend and grossed only $1.4 million for a domestic total of just $18.8 million while Late Night fell 58% this weekend and grossed another $1 million for a domestic total of only $13 million. 

Pavarotti grossed $532,000 from 288 locations this weekend for a per-theater average of $1,847, bringing it up to a $1.8 million domestic gross. The Dead Don't Die grossed another $520,000, a 55% drop from last weekend, for a domestic gross of $5.8 million. I had no idea The Other Side of Heaven 2: Fire of Faith even existed until a few days ago, but debuted in 205 locations and grossed $425,000 for a per-theater average of $2,073. The Last Black Man in San Francisco expanded into 155 locations this weekend and grossed $482,000 for a per-theater average of $3,112 for a domestic total of $2 million. Despite the fact that it's never played in more than 155 locations, Last Black Man is now the eighteenth biggest limited release of 2019. Biggest Little Farm dipped 19% this weekend to gross another $132,454, bringing it up to a $3.52 million domestic gross. Edging out the $3.50 million domestic haul of The Beach Bum means Biggest Little Farm is the fifth biggest NEON release ever. Four of the five biggest NEON releases are documentaries, how about that. Meanwhile, fellow NEON holdover Wild Rose grossed only $64,113 this weekend from 16 locations for a per-theater average of $4,007 for a $135,667 domestic total. Maiden opened to $50,000 from 6 theaters for a per-theater average of $8,453.

The top 12 movies this weekend, the 26th of 2019, grossed a total of $138.8 million, one of the smaller hauls for this time of year in recent years, including 2018, a week which this box office frame was down 19% from. June 2019 as a whole appears to have grossed about $1.09 billion, the fourth-biggest June monthly gross in history. Exactly halfway through the year, 2019 has grossed $5.5 billion and continues to trail the last four years of domestic box office grosses in terms of year-to-date comparisons.

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