WORLDWIDE BOX OFFICE FOR WEEK ENDING JULY 21, 2024

 WORLDWIDE BOX OFFICE FOR WEEK ENDING JULY 21, 2024 

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

1. Successor -- $178m/$222m ww 2. Despicable Me 4 –– $136m/$574m worldwide total

3. Twisters -- $124m/$136m ww

4. Inside Out 2 –– $93m/$1,443m ww

5. Longlegs -- $39m/$56m ww

6. A Place Called Silence -- $36m/$159m ww

7. A Quiet Place: Day One –– $20m/$241m ww

8. Fly Me To The Moon -- $12m/$31m ww

9. Your Name (2017 Jap ani) -- $11m/$391m ww

10. Bad Boys: Ride or Die –– $10m/$388m ww

11. Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf: The World Guardians -- $5m

12. The Count of Monte Cristo – $5m/$25m ww

13. Indian 2: Zero Tolerance -- $4m/$18m ww

14. Escape -- $4m/$13m ww

15. Bad Newz (Indian-Punjab comedy) -- $4m ww debut

16. Detective Conan: The Multimillion... -- $3m/$125m ww

17. MaXXXine -- $3m/$18m ww

18. Horizon: An American Saga Chapter 1–– $3m/$33m ww

19. Kinds of Kindness -- $2m/$11m ww

20. Handsome Guys –– $2m/$11m ww

21. Into The Mortal World (Chi ani) -- $2m/$4m ww

22. Moments We Shared –– $1m/$71m ww

23. Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes –– $1m/$396m ww

24. Hijack 1971 –– $1m/$12m ww

25. A Legend -- $1m/$11m ww

26. Sound of Hope: The Story of Possum Trot -- $1m/$11m ww

27. Project Silence -- $1m/$4m ww

NOT TRACKED/LOST TRACK AFTER LAST WEEK:

Kalki 2898 A.D. –– $11m/$120m ww

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

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 

And the #1 movie around the world is...Successor. That's a Chinese film, though I'm still not sure what it's about. (The English translation of the title is not helping; too vague, though I'm pretty sure it's not a knock-off of the HBO drama Succession.) In any case, it's a good reminder of why we look at the worldwide box office and totals for the entire week. 

Because the #2 movie around the world is Despicable Me 4, the first animated franchise in history to gross more than $5 billion worldwide. This edition is about to blow past $600m worldwide and will surely hit $900m worldwide, just like the last four in the franchise. 

And so the #3 movie around the world is Twisters, the sequel no one was asking for directed by Lee Isaac Chung, who actually made the marvelous film Minari, a quiet drama he followed up with this. Is Glen Powell a star? Not yet. The star here was the special effects. With these three films and Inside Out 2 becoming the second highest grossing animated film of all time (Yep, the 2019 version of The Lion King is still #1. Sure, it went for a photo-realistic look but it's still animated) and Longlegs a surprise horror hit, one thing is clear. People are absolutely ready and willing to go to the movies. 

Here's one more reminder: people can't go to the movies if you don't release them in theaters. 2024 is scheduled to have 20-25% fewer releases than 2019 (and roughly 20% fewer than the average number of releases between 2016-2019). That means if it's a normal year, we should expect  the total box office to be a little more than $8 billion for North America. That will be a great result. And if we release a good healthy mix of movies in 2025, box office can be right back at $10b to $11b. If you release them, they will come. 

Finally, the French film The Count of Monte Cristo just...reappeared. The most expensive French film of the year so far at $47mb, it debuted to $20m. Last week? Nothing. I could find no box office update anywhere. This week I see a new total of $25m for the film, so I put it back on the chart, though likely it made this money last week. Why the film should collapse so completely is unclear. It received excellent results and is handsomely mounted. This is a dreadful one-two punch for the producers, who also backed the ambitious two-part remake of The Three Musketeers that underperformed worldwide despite excellent reviews. You would think the movies would at least have scored in France but that hasn't been the case. 

LOST TRACK

Two more films are on the Lost Track List. It's highly unlikely either the Indian sci-fi film Kalki 2898 A.D. or the Japanese period war film Kingdom 4 both dropped from $10m/11m to off the charts in just one week. But I can't find any data on either of them. 

NOTES (info on new movies and international flicks not on most people's radar)

1. 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. 

3. Twisters ($175mb) -- Almost all the box office stories ignore the fact that Twisters opened in some markets last week where it grossed $12m. That means when they mention the film's total gross to date, they get it wrong. It wasn't $123m. It was $135m. (On Monday, the actuals were gooses up another $1m, so the final total is $136m) 

6. 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. 

9.  Your Name -- China has been rereleasing Japanese fare for a while as it continues to pivot away from Hollywood fare. This is a 2017 smash hit.

11. Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf: The World Guardians -- this is the ninth film in a franchise spun off from a TV series. In the show, the goats pleasantly eat grass while avoiding the clumsy wolf that wants to eat them. In the movies, as often as not they band together against outside forces. Sometimes the franchise is translated as Pleasant Goat and Big Gray Wolf.  The movies were trending down a touch, but the last one bounced back up to $20m ww gross and they keep making them so this is clearly in the micro-budget realm for an animated film. 

13. 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? 

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

15. Bad Newz -- This is a Punjabi comedy proving a modest hit for India. Seemingly everyone but the Hindi industry is clicking as movie-going still lags in that market. The story seems quite risqué for that culture. A successful female chef gets a divorce and moves to a new place, has a drunken one-night stand with a man...and that same night reunites and has sex with her ex-husband when he asks to come back into her life! Then she gets pregnant with twins: one from each man she had sex with (that can happen, apparently). What is this, Sex and the City? Presumably this all happens without us ever seeing anyone kiss. 

22. 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. 

24. 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.

25. 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. 

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

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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