WORLDWIDE BOX OFFICE FOR WEEK ENDING JULY 14, 2024

WORLDWIDE BOX OFFICE FOR WEEK ENDING JULY 14, 2024 

A film's total gross for the entire previous week is followed by its worldwide total to date.

1. Despicable Me 4 –– $208m/$438m worldwide total

2. Inside Out 2 –– $133m/$1,350m ww

3. A Place Called Silence -- $69m/$123m ww

4. Successor -- $54m ww

5. A Quiet Place: Day One –– $43m/$221m ww

6. Longlegs -- $26m ww debut

7. Fly Me To The Moon -- $19m ww debut

8. Bad Boys: Ride or Die –– $18m/$378m ww

9. Indian 2: Zero Tolerance -- $14mb

10. Twisters -- $12m ww debut

11. Kalki 2898 A.D. –– $11m/$120m ww

12. Kingdom 4: Return of the Great General -- $10m ww

13. MaXXXine -- $7m/$15m ww

14. A Legend -- $6m/$10m ww

15. Moments We Shared –– $5m/$70m ww

16. Escape -- $5m/$9m ww

17. Horizon: An American Saga Chapter 1–– $5m/$30m ww

18. Project Silence -- $3m ww debut

19. Handsome Guys –– $3m/$9m ww

20. Sound of Hope: The Story of Possum Trot -- $3m/$10m ww

21. The Bikeriders –– $3m/$33m ww

22. Jatt & Juliet 3 –– $3m/$12m ww

23. Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes –– $2m/$395m ww

24. The Fall Guy –– $2m/$178m ww

25. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga –– $2m/$173m ww

26. Kinds of Kindness -- $2m/$9m ww

27. If –– $1m/$186m ww

28. Customs Frontline –– $1m/$ 18m ww

29. Hijack 1971 –– $1m/$11m ww

30. Thelma –– $1m/$8m ww

31. Welcome To My Side -- $1m/$6m ww

NOT TRACKED: The Count of Monte Cristo – $20m ww debut

Bold: movies that have tripled their reported budgets.

This makes them likely hits from box office alone.

ww: worldwide

mb: a film's budget so $50mb means it cost $50m to make.

Below is an analysis of the box office, notes on individual films and at the bottom an explanation of the chart and how it is derived. 

ANALYSIS 

Animated films continue to dominate. The Despicable Me franchise became the first animated movie franchise and one of the rare franchises of any type to gross $5 billion worldwide. (This does not include merchandise, by the way. Just box office.) Meanwhile, Pixar's Inside Out 2 is poised to pass Frozen and become the top grossing animated film of all time worldwide. 

In more good news, the horror film Longlegs enjoyed a huge debut, with star Nicolas Cage seeing the biggest opening in some 20 years for a live action film. Those were the salad days of National Treasure and Ghost Rider. Like John Travolta, Cage seems to have nine lives when it comes to popularity at the box office and critical acclaim. Low budget horror movies aren't just money in the bank for their backers. They're also an interesting platform for resurrecting or recharging careers, from Vincent Price with Roger Corman to Ethan Hawke and The Purge and now Cage. 

Kevin Costner might have hoped a big hit TV show would mean his passion project Western Horizon would put him back on top of the box office. After a decent second week hold, the movie slowed down considerably. The theatrical release of Part Two is now delayed so viewers can have a chance to watch the first film in theaters or–more likely–on demand in their homes. If Part Two offers a lot more action than the long setup of Part One, maybe there's hope for this one yet. Still, it's easy to second guess and say a 12 hour movie should have been a miniseries. Surely some streamer would have backed the Yellowstone star's project. 

Fly Me To The Moon is a romantic comedy starring Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum. It's 1969 and she's a pr person hired to stage a fake moon landing in case the real one goes awry. He's the NASA director in charge of Apollo 11. They butt heads...and then fall in love. Stupidly, some suggest this film is a "test" as to whether adults want to go to the movies and whether a film of this sort will work theatrically. Umm,  we have 100 years of evidence adults like to go to the movies and no evidence of some bizarre refusal to ever go to the theater again except for animated fare and Marvel. Has everyone forgotten about Barbenheimer already? The same argument is made whenever a Black person fronts a big budget movie, like the new Captain America starring (to me, the rather dull) Anthony Mackie. Films are tests only of their own quality, audience appeal and such. The dumb part of Fly Me To The Moon is that it has a reported $100m budget. A romantic comedy drama period film about a pr person? You should not spend $100m on that.  

Finally, the French film The Count of Monte Cristo just...disappeared. The most expensive French film of the year so far at $47mb, it debuted to $20m. This week? It might well have dropped by 50%, which would explain why it didn't make ComScore's chart, which only lists the Top 10 films worldwide and this week stops at Bad Boys: Ride or Die at $9.9m. (ComScore really should list all the films it has info on, at least including any movie it can that grossed at least...$5 million? A Top 20?) No word in the trades or Wikipedia or anywhere I could spot with info on how it did. 

NOTES 

3. A Place Called Silence -- Chi crime thriller; almost certainly based on a 2022 Korean film, based on the trailers and plot descriptions. I've no idea of the budget but given the type of film and scale of project, I assume this is a clear box office winner. 

4. Successor -- this debuted in China and is presumably a Chinese film of some sort, but it's title is too vague in English (and too similar to the HBO series) for me to figure out which film this is and what it's about. Assuming it's a drama and not a wildly expensive action/period film, it's likely a winner. 

9. Indian 2 aka Indian 2: Zero Tolerance (Tamil; $36mb) -- It's the sequel to a 1996 film and suddenly we're told to expect it is part two of a trilogy. What took so long?

11. Kalki 2898 AD is a $75m Indian Telugu sci-fi film. It may be the most expensive Indian film (not adjusting for inflation) in history, certainly the most expensive film made in the Telugu language. It's one more sign that the strength of Indian cinema (which is slowly rebounding) stretches way beyond Bollywood (Hindi-language films). 

12. Kingdom 4: Return of the Great General (Jap period war film) -- the fourth in a live action franchise. Budgets aren't mentioned but the first two grossed about $50m and the third $30m, so either these are very inexpensive period war films or someone has lost their mind. 

14. A Legend (Chi fantasy drama) -- The legend Jackie Chan stars in an action fantasy in which scientists exploring a glacier find themselves caught up in an ages-old fight between good and evil. Young people seem to carry the bulk of the action in flashbacks, but Chan still brings it, at least in the trailer. 

15. Moments We Shared (Chi drama) -- This is the story of a young man washing out in the big city and returning home to his grandmother's small town, determined to make a go of her canteen. No points for guessing he'll realize he's right where he belongs. Given its scale, this too seems a box office winner. But again, we're just guessing. 

16. Escape (SK thriller) -- A soldier in North Korea defects to the south, only to be hunted down by a Javert-like fanatical major.

18. Project Silence (SK disaster film; $13mb) 

22. Jatt & Juliet 3 is an Indian Punjabi rom-com. The three films in the Jatt & Juliet franchise are rom-coms starring the same two actors but each is described as a "spiritual" sequel, that is, not necessarily the same characters or storyline. Anyway, the first two became the highest grossing films of all time in the Punjabi language and of course they hope to keep the streak going. 

28. Customs Frontline is a Hong Kong thriller, possibly in previews.  Another action film from HK scores solid numbers, a turnaround since HK films were faring poorly in the mainland of China for awhile. 

29. Hijack 1971 (K drama) -- Korean drama about the hijacking of an airline...in 1971. Hey, there's no reason to get fancy with a title.

31. Welcome To My Side/Huan Ying Lai Dao Wo Shen Bian (Chi rom-comic fantasy) -- A Wacky Chinese comic romance in which a guy has an accident...and starts seeing giant rubber duckies everywhere. Soon everyone around him looks and talks like a giant rubber duckie. Then he spots a beautiful woman who doesn't look like a giant rubber duckie and falls in love. 

THE CHART AND HOW IT IS COMPILED 

Here's 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 anywhere else discussing box office around the world. 

The weekly charts contain the total gross for every movie in theaters around the world during those 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 any movies 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. 

So here we go....

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