WORLDWIDE BOX OFFICE FOR WEEK ENDING AUGUST 25, 2024
A film's total gross for the entire previous week is followed by
its worldwide total to date.
1. Alien: Romulus – $117m/$225m worldwide
2. Deadpool & Wolverine – $68m/$1,211m ww
3. It Ends With Us – $63m/$243m ww
4. Despicable Me 4 –– $38m/$885m ww
5. Stree 2 – $36m/$60m ww
6. Inside Out 2 –– $23m/$1,649m ww
7. Coraline – $19m/$165m ww reissue
8. Chong Sheng aka Go For Broke – $19m/$34m ww
9. Twisters -- $14m/$347m ww
11. Detective Conan: Million Dollar Pentagram – $13m/$159m ww
12. Successor -- $11m/$459m ww
13. The Hedgehog – $11m ww debut
13. b Untouchable -- $11m ww debut
14. Trap -- $10m/$72m ww
15. Bai She: Fu Sheng aka White Snake: Afloat -- $8m/$51m ww
16. The Crow (2024 remake) – $8m ww debut
17. The Forge – $6m ww debut
18. Upstream -- $5m/$48m ww
19. Borderlands – $5m/$24m ww
22. Land Of Happiness – $3m/$10m ww
23. Harold and the Purple Crayon -- $2m/$23m ww
24. Cuckoo – $1m/$6m ww
26. Victory – $1m/$2m ww
NOTE: Sundance film Didi at $3.7m. One of my favorites of the year. Check it out!
NOTE: Longlegs hits $101m ww.
NOTE: I'm only human. Last week I screwed up the math on Deadpool & Wolverine AND I conflated two
movies and messed up their box office numbers. Land of Broken Hearts aka Fu Fu De Sheng is a
Chinese movie while Land of Happiness is a Korean drama. (It doesn't help that another Chinese film
is called Bai She: Fu Sheng. So it could have been worse.) They both grossed $3m
and I...I got confused. The earlier charts have been corrected.
Bold: movies that have tripled (or likely will triple) their reported budgets.
This makes them probable hits from box office alone. Many films become profitable without
achieving this; but it's a useful marker of a major hit.
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
I'm calling it! Fifteen years after it first came out, the 2009 stop-motion animated masterpiece Coraline is a hit! It's grossed $38m so far this go-round, opening to an excellent $19m and then earning another $19m in the last seven days. That is a terrific hold and an amazing over-all number for a movie that wasn't a blockbuster the first time out. Movies have a long history of being re-released in movie theaters over and over again: The Sound of Music, Gone With The Wind, the Star Wars films and of course Disney made a mint putting out its animated movies every seven years. More movies got re-released the summer after they came out to cash in again, like Jaws and E.T. But much of that happened in the years before cable and VHS and DVD and streaming made movies available anytime at the click of a button. And most of those were huge hits, not the more qualified success of Coraline, which enjoyed great reviews but didn't even count as a hit the first time around. It cost a reported $60mb and grossed $127m worldwide in 2019. Now it's going to hit $180m, my marker for naming a film a hit from box office alone. It's not a perfect measure and we don't really know the actual figures about any movie or when it all starts to pay off. (You certainly don't need to triple your real/reported budget at the box office for a movie to be profitable in the long run.) But it sure is nice to do.
What does this mean? Nothing. Every movie is unique. Truly. Are reissues suddenly going to make a lot more money? Nope. Except sometimes. Coraline is a family film based on a classic children's book. Historically, family films prove more lucrative than not post-theatrical. So this was already a valuable title. Plus it's in 3-D! Were they right about 3-D all along? Nope. It's the rare movie I would strongly recommend you see in a theater in 3-D because it's done with care and really is gorgeous to see. But 99% of all movies don't need to be done in 3-D and even when they are done in 3-D (which is rarer and rarer), they're rarely done in 3-D this well. It was a smart bet at the time and now an undeniable one. Just don't expect director Henry Selick to find out his gross profit points are worth anything yet. Now that would be a miracle.
Speaking of animated movies, Inside Out 2 needs just another $15m to pass 2019's The Lion King reboot to become the highest grossing animated film of all time worldwide. Some outlets mention The Lion King but add that Disney doesn't classify it as an animated film. (It's entirely animated except for an opening shot of a sunrise but is designed to look as photo-realistic as possible so you believe these are real animals.) Excuse me, Disney doesn't get a vote. If they insisted Toy Story was a documentary, would we all be forced to say the highest grossing documentary film of all time was about Woody and Buzz coming to life? No. So enough of that.
If you don't recognize a film from its title, keep reading! Below, I give country origin, plot info and a reported budget for every film where available.
Here's a reminder: Studios are releasing about 25% FEWER movies than they did on average from 2016-2019, it's only reasonable to expect a box office total this year that's 25% lower than average for those four years. So expect 2024 to hit about $8.4 billion in North America, which would be great. (Anything above $8b is fine, really.) If that happens, the box office has "fully" recovered, people are going to the movies and if studios release a robust, normal schedule of big and medium and small movies in 2025, we should be back at the $10b-$11b range again.
NOTES: info on movies in release. The "mb" refers to a film's reported budget, in millions of US $. So $40mb means a budget of US $40m.
1. Alien: Romulus – $80mb. And a monster success in China,
where it's at $75m and counting.
2. Deadpool & Wolverine -- reported $200mb means it's a massive hit.
I assume Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman will have to back up their
SUVs to haul away their payday. But still.
3. It Ends With Us -- reported $25mb. Based on the Colleen Hoover
blockbuster novel about a woman fighting to escape domestic violence.
4. Despicable Me 4 – reported budget of $100m? Surely Steve Carell
and the rest are demanding big bucks
by now. While we usually accept a reported budget, our eyebrows are
sometimes raised in skepticism.
5. Stree 2 – with a reported budget ranging from $6mb to $15mb
(which is a huge range!) and an opening week of $24m ww, this is a hit.
6. Inside Out 2 –– its total is now $1.649 billion, so it needs another $15m
to pass 2019's remake of The Lion King and become the highest grossing animated film of all time.
12. Successor -- Chinese comedy about poor family whose entire hopes and dreams depend
on their son. A trailer with no subtitles gives me a vague idea of the film's tone and style but
I'm not sure what exactly the son is supposed to do, other than score well at school? Given
the scope of the film, I'm sure its budget wasn't massive and so it's almost certainly a hit
from box office alone.
13. The Hedgehog – A Chinese family drama about stuttering and rebellious (but hot) teen
and his mentally ill grandfather. I pray they make a sequel and call it The Fox.
13. b. Untouchable --Chinese crime thriller revolving around gambling and tough guys.
15. Bai She: Fu Sheng aka White Snake: Afloat -- I believe this Chinese film (perhaps animated)
made $5m in previews. ComScore calls it White Snake but I believe it's a sequel to
the 2019 animated film White Snake and its sequel Green Snake. What I found on IMDB
is a movie called Bai She: Fu Sheng which officially opened August 10, so maybe it previewed?
I'm flying blind here, folks! Now it seems to be called White Snake: Afloat for English markets.
16. The Crow -- unnecessary $50mb remake of the cursed franchise.
17. The Forge – $6m ww debut for this faith-based film about a teen who graduates high school
but isn't sure what to do with his life. God tells him! A reported $5mb. It's always good to gross
more than your budget on the opening week, but these films often don't have legs. Let's see week two.
19. Borderlands – this Eli Roth extravaganza starring Cate Blanchett is based on a video game, cost
22. Land Of Happiness – K drama about lawyer in 1979 representing the man who assassinated
the country's ruler. The verdict is practically pre-determined, but the lawyer still fights for a fair trial.
23. Harold and the Purple Crayon – I don't buy the reported $40mb, but even at that price, it's a flop.
24. Cuckoo – this horror film cost a reported $7mb.
26. Victory – K comedy/drama about a high school cheerleading squad. They love to dance!
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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