WORLDWIDE BOX OFFICE FOR WEEK ENDING OCTOBER 20, 2024
A film's gross for the last seven days is followed by its total worldwide gross.
1. Smile 2–$46m worldwide debut
2. The Wild Robot–$48m / $196m ww
3. Joker: Folie à Deux–$27m / $192m ww
4. Terrifier 3–$22m / $45m ww
5. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice–$15m / $435m ww
6. The Volunteers: The Battle of Life and Death–$16m / $156m
7. The Substance–$9m / $42m ww
8. Transformers One–$8m / $119m ww
9. High Forces–$6m / $40m ww
10. Tiger Wolf Rabbit–$5m / $64m ww
11. We Live In Time–$5m ww debut
12. L'Amour Ouf–$5m ww debut
13. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets–$5m / $887m ww
14. Panda Plan aka Project Panda–$4m / $40m ww
15. Piece by Piece -- $4m /ww $8m ww
16. Saturday Night -- $4m / $8m ww
17. Deadpool & Wolverine–$3m / $1.336b ww
18. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone -- $3m / $1.034b ww
19. Despicable Me 4–$2m / $963m ww
20. The Nightmare Before Christmas -- $2m / $107m ww
21. The Forge–$2m / $35m ww
22. The Apprentice -- $2m / $4 ww
23. A Normal Family–$2m ww debut
24. Saving Bikini Bottom: The Sandy Cheeks Movie–$2m ww debut
25. Inside Out 2–$1m / $1.694b ww
26. It Ends With Us–$1m / $347m ww
27. Speak No Evil – $1m / $74m ww
28. Never Let Go–$1m / $16m ww
29. White Bird–$1m / $7m ww
30. A Tapestry of a Legendary Land–$1m / $7m ww
Bold: movies that have or likely will triple their reported budgets. That's my standard for a movie being a box office hit from theatrical alone. Many films will be profitable for a studio even if they don't triple their reported budget, but it's a good marker to indicate a big hit.
ANALYSIS
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is tearing it up...and Halloween is 10 days away! Beetlejuice Beetlejuice should continue to have good legs through the end of October and is at $435m worldwide. The original grossed $85m. Originally WB planned to put this on streaming only. Clearly that would have been a monumental error. By and large, despite the expense, theatrical is a great boon for most films. They get much more exposure, they become more "important" in the eyes of most casual fans and they can generate serious coin. Putting aside the smart move of bolstering theatrical exhibition–a key component in the film industry–it can at least pay for its own marketing, right? If a movie just doubles the marketing budget in North America, that's a win. Then they can put it on their streamer with much greater visibility. That's my metric. Not "did the film become a blockbuster" but did theatrical pay for its own marketing budget? That means the film essentially promoted itself. How is that not a win?
And yet, here is The Wild Robot. The film is a word of mouth smash. Like Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, this is a winner from box office alone by tripling its reported budget. Last week the film grossed $48 million worldwide. So why the heck is DreamWorks already undercutting the box office momentum and encouraging piracy by rushing the movie out onto streaming. Yes, it's only available to buy at the moment, which most folk won't do. (They'll wait to rent it or watch it on some streamer, even if they're not sure which streamer might soon carry The Wild Robot on its platform. (Peacock, I assume.) But widely advertising its availability in the home when the film is the #2 movie in North America and still has serious legs? That's as stupid as the folk who thought they should release Beetlejuice Beetlejuice direct to streaming. And at least the BB folk were making an educated guess. In the case of DreamWorks, they are cutting the legs out from under a box office smash.
I am all for nimbleness and quick pivots and everyone working together. If a movie like Megalopolis falls on its face, exhibitors should not stand in the way of it QUICKLY becoming available to own or rent online. In its fourth weekend, it's gone from 1800+ screens to 73 and falling fast. No one is showing it anymore, so no one should be upset at saying, Ok, this film's screen count/gross is below X, so the studio is free to pivot to streaming. Right? That's everyone reacting to facts on the ground and not enforcing a good will contract just to prove a point. So for DreamWorks not to similarly pivot and say, "Gee, we need to delay our digital debut for weeks–or MONTHS– since this film is proving a great, big fat hit and we can make a ton of money and our partners the exhibitors are still supporting it" stuns me. I literally couldn't believe my eyes when I saw the tv ads during baseball post-season (and there's an odd buy, for what it's worth). I double checked the charts just to make sure I wasn't confused about where the film was at in theatrical. How much has DreamWorks thrown away at the box office? $100m? $200m? Sure, they would only take in 40% of that but this is a ludicrous, lunk-headed move.
Glad I got that off my chest. If you want to be smart when investing in films, cheapo horror films are clearly the way to go. Smile 2 follows the success of Terrifier 3 and Speak No Evil as another winner in that category. It ain't foolproof, so don't drain your retirement fund on it, but boy is horror a dependable, low-risk genre.
Here's a reminder about the annual box office. Studios are releasing about 25% fewer movies in 2024 than they did during the 2016-2019 pre-COVID era. That means we can reasonably expect the annual North American box office to reach about 25% less than that era's average box office. So look for about $8.3b for the year and call that a return to business as usual. Currently, North American box office is at $6.3b, with Thanksgiving and Christmas to go. Pump up the releases of all types of movies in 2025 and we have every reason to expect box office back in $10b-$11b territory.
NOTES
mb= a film's budget in millions of US dollars
1. Smile 2–a $28mb, which is a reasonable jump over the $17mb of the original Smile. That film grossed $217m worldwide. With this one grossing well over the film's budget on opening weekend, it's a clear box office winner. I would LOVE someone to develop a quick and easy guide to how wide a film opens worldwide. A simple pie chart showing what percentage of the worldwide market a movie has already opened in would be awesome. Smile 2 grossed $23m from North America alone. That's about, what, 20% of the worldwide market? With China another 17%? 15%? (Even if a movie never opens there or expects to make much less or nothing in that market.) Smile 2 opened in 36 countries. But Kuwait, the Netherlands and Ukraine (!) probably don't add up to 1% of the worldwide market. Is this opening 40% of the worldwide total? 60%? I don't know but it would be very useful to measure this based on the previous year's worldwide box office and the contributions of each market. Anyway, Smile 2 will certainly hit $84m worldwide even if it collapses hard and is a hit.
2. The Wild Robot–$80mb. Ha! Based on prior films from DreamWorks Animation I guessed this film's budget was around $80mb. And Wikipedia now says its roughly $78mb. I rounded up $2m so I could be right on the dot (plus, the math is easier when tripling).
3. Joker: Folie à Deux–a reported $190mb. This won't come close to $600m worldwide, so I'm afraid it's a flop.
4. Terrifier 3 -- $23m ww debut on a $2mb! Success, thy name is cheap horror films.
5. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice–a reported $100mb and good audience response means this is a winner right off the bat. Hardly a slam dunk, by the way. The original came out almost 35 years ago and only grossed $78m worldwide. So the sequel cost more than the entire first film's worldwide gross! That's not a recipe for success, normally. But the original only cost $15mb to make and everyone knew it enjoyed a long afterlife, thanks to tv reruns, Halloween, the Broadway musical and so on. Still, gamble it was and the gamble paid off.
6. The Volunteers: The Battle of Life and Death–a sequel to China's 2023's The Volunteers: To The War, which launched this trilogy about China's involvement in the Korean War (or "police action," if you accept the Orwellian description of the US government). The first film was a reported $85mb, so presumably the sequel is the same? Director Chen Kaige already made two films about just one battle in the Korean War: The Battle at Lake Changjin I and II. They were shot back-to-back and cost a reported $200mb. Together they grossed a massive $1.5 billion worldwide. No wonder they greenlit a three-quel! This time, they spent at least 13 months filming, so surely that means they shot the entire trilogy in one fell swoop. But I bet the budget has been cut in thirds, for reporting purposes so it doesn't seem so big. The total is $240m or so for three films, I believe, which seems reasonable compared to $200mb for two films that proved such massive hits. But who the heck knows? I'm making a lot of guesses here. According to my Showbiz Sandbox notes from last year, The Volunteers: To The War topped out at about $120m worldwide. Needless to say, that's a stunning drop from the $900m the first in the Lake duology grossed. This one opened at $111m, so whew! Maybe there are more victories in the sequel? If nothing else, it's off to a better start.
7. The Substance–$18mb reported for the Demi Moore body horror comeback.
8. Transformers One–a reported $75mb per the trades, though Animation Magazine has a nice feature with the director and producer and offers up $147m for the budget, which is interestingly specific. So, there's that.
9. High Forces–it's Die Hard in a plane! Sort of. (Remember when every action film was Die Hard in...? Those were the days.) In this Hong Kong action film Andy Lau stars as a cop who accidentally blinded his daughter when stopping a jewel robbery. His marriage ends and he quits the force to work as a security expert. Years later, Lau boards the ultra-luxury Airbus A380, only to see his wife and daughter on board Hijackers take off the plane and start killing off passengers in economy (Man, you really should have upgraded.) Lau takes them on, with his blind daughter somehow secretly providing him intel to defeat the baddies. If it's set during Christmas time, I'll say Yipee-kiyay! The film is set for a North American release.
10. Tiger Wolf Rabbit–a Chinese crime drama of sorts. Three people united by having lost a child (to kidnapping, maybe?) join together on a road trip for revenge.
11. We Live In Time–$5m ww debut Andrew Garfield/Florence Pugh drama about a decades-spanning romance.
12. L'Amour Ouf–literally "Love, Phew" but translated as Beating Hearts. A Belgian drama about teen lovers torn apart by gang violence. In competition at Cannes, but widely panned as the worst of the bunch.
14. Panda Plan aka Project Panda–a new Jackie Chan comedy in which he rescues a (CGI-generated) panda. Hilarity and heartwarming moments ensue in this family oriented action comedy. The English language title is officially Panda Plan. But the original Chinese title translates literally as Project Panda. Somebody probably made good money advising that unnecessary title change.
15. Piece by Piece -- $16mb. A Lego documentary about musical talent Pharell Williams. I like everything about this project, from the concept to its positivity. Why not do a documentary in Legos? (Hey, the fictional Karen Carpenter story proved genius when told with Barbie dolls.) But a silly trade story questioned whether the documentary branch was ready to champion commercial projects like Piece by Piece. Umm, since it got at best middling reviews and appears to be a very modest box office film (not by doc standards, necessarily, but still), this seems a silly question. When a film is acclaimed and a big hit, the usual resistance by the doc branch is annoying. In this case, one could hardly fault them for ignoring it. It will be on few if any lists as the best of the year.
16. Saturday Night -- $4m ww debut $30mb
17. Deadpool & Wolverine– a $200mb means it's still a big winner.
18. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone -- $7m / $1.031b ww ($125mb). Reissued in China.
20. The Nightmare Before Christmas -- $2m / $105m ww (Made $103m before current reissue) ($18mb)
21. The Forge–this faith-based film did better in its second week? Success! Reported $5mb.
22. The Apprentice -- with a $16mb, you can spin this either way politically. Liberals can say people didn't want to see the film because they're sick and tired of Trump. So he'll lose. Right wingers can say people didn't want to see a film that criticized in any way their beloved ruler. So he'll win. Both side-ism!
23. A Normal Family–Korean drama based on the Herman Koch novel about two families meeting to discuss what to do about a violent crime their children did together.
24. Saving Bikini Bottom: The Sandy Cheeks Movie–no reported budget for this Netflix exclusive which is already online for six weeks all over the world but opened commercially in China on Oct 18.
25. Inside Out 2–$200mb. With $1.666b, it passes 2019's The Lion King to be the highest grossing animated film of all time.
29. White Bird–A reported $20mb. It's a sequel/prequel to the 2017 film Wonder. Here a teen (from the first film) tells his awesome grandma (Helen Mirren) that he feels pressured to fit in at his new school and not cause waves. In response, she tells him about her childhood when fleeing the Holocaust. So it's a teaching moment!
THE CHART AND HOW IT IS COMPILED
This column is a week by week tracking of box office around the world. It is compiled by pulling from every possible source: ComScore, Box Office Mojo, Variety, Hollywood Reporter, Deadline, charts for countries like China and India and South Korea, individual stories in trade or general interest newspapers, Wikipedia and anyone else discussing box office.
ComScore Weekly Global Box Office Chart
The weekly charts contain the total gross for every movie in theaters around the world during the last seven days. If a movie opens on a Thursday, we include all the box office from Thursday through Sunday. If it opens on a Tuesday night, we cover all six days. If it opens on a Sunday (as some movies do in India or wherever, depending on holidays), then we include the box office for that one day. If a movie was released before the current week, we include the box office for all seven days. Why ignore the box office from Monday through Thursday, as most charts do when tallying the latest weekend and focusing on new releases?
How do we arrive at this number? We take the total worldwide box office we have for a movie, subtract from it the previous week's total worldwide box office...and that's how much it made during the past seven days. Naturally, territories and movies sometimes fall through the cracks but we are as up to date as we can be, given our dependence on other outlets for the basic info.
First, I list box office on every film we can from around the world. Any movie grossing at least US $1 million will be on here if we get info on it. Then I give some thoughts on the box office overall and individual films. That's followed by notes where I give info on every movie, with a focus on films not from Hollywood. So Despicable Me 4 you know. But a small Korean comedy or French drama? That I'll identify for you as best I can.
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