WORLDWIDE BOX OFFICE FOR WEEK ENDING AUGUST 18, 2024
A film's total gross for the entire previous week is followed by its worldwide total to date.
1. Deadpool Vs. Wolverine – $113m/$1,143m worldwide
4. Despicable Me 4 –– $40m/$847m ww
5. Detective Conan: The Multi-Million Dollar Pentagram – $17m/$146m ww
6. Inside Out 2 –– $32m/$1,626m ww (needs $38m)
7. Stree 2 – $24m ww debut
8. Twisters -- $23m/$333m ww
9. Successor -- $21m/$448m ww
10. Coraline – $19m/$146m ww reissue (orig grossed $127m ww)
11. Bai She: Fu Sheng aka White Snake: Afloat -- $18m/$43m ww
12. Upstream -- $17m/$43m ww
13. Trap -- $17m/$62m ww
14. Chong Sheng aka Go For Broke – $15m ww debut
16. Harold and the Purple Crayon -- $6m/$21m ww
17. Decoded -- $4m/$46m ww
18. Land of Broken Hearts aka Fu Fu De Sheng – $3m/$10m ww
19. The Land Of Happiness – $3m ww debut
21. Cuckoo – $2m/$5m ww
22. Heartsping: Teenieping of Love – $1m/$5m ww
24. Victory – $1m ww debut
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
Wait, I thought people were tired of franchises? Alien is the latest series to enjoy a successful new entry. Fancy horror films with a sci-fi twist, the Alien movies work well with modest budgets and without grand, philosophical ideas a la Alien: Prometheus. They've made nine movies in all (including Alien V. Predator's two films) and six out of the nine have been box office hits. Alien: Romulus wisely sports an $80mb, less than Alien: Covenant (which cost $100mb and only grossed $240m) and even less than Alien: Prometheus (I mean, they called it Prometheus but this should have been the official name, no?). That was the most expensive at $130m and grossed $400m.
There will surely be an Alien: Something or Other, given that history. And while I found the film so-so (it's not particularly clever, though David Jonsson has by far the most interesting role and makes the most of it), it's another hit for director Fede Álvarez. He's made two low budget horror hits with Evil Dead (2013) and Don't Breathe (2018). His only stumble was 2018's The Girl in the Spider's Web, a misbegotten attempt to make another English-language film franchise out of the Girl With The Dragon Tattoo books.
Speaking of hits, It Ends With Us is now at a remarkable $180m worldwide. This is precisely the sort of gamble Hollywood should be taking. Make lots of low and mid-budget movies if you want box office to return to its glory days, exhibitors to flourish and a training ground for new directors like Álvarez. True, Blake Lively has a pretty good track record, with hits like The Shallows, A Simple Favor and close-enough-to-count The Age Of Adaline to demonstrate she's more than Gossip Girl. Still, It Ends With Us is about domestic abuse, hardly a slam dunk. And it's going to be one of the most profitable films of the year, compared to its cost. The romantic comedy Fly Me To The Moon cost way too much at $100mb. But even if it cost $40mb, it would still be a flop. Neither movie proves anything, other than the old dictum that nobody knows anything. But I do know that mid-budget movies are a cornerstone of a healthy film industry.
In India, the Bollywood section of the film industry has been dormant, but Stree 2 is a welcome Hindi hit. (It's nice when all sectors of the industry do well.) Nonetheless, the Indian box office is still very quiet overall. Looking at recent releases, most barely registered at all at the box office. It's feast or famine and even the feasting isn't that good. What's the deal with movie-going in India? I've no idea, but it's not improving very much.
Twisters is not going to be a hit. However, M. Night Shyamalan's new thriller is a win for him and back-from-the-boonies star Josh Hartnett. Trap cost $30m and is at $62m, with enough legs to make it to roughly $90m I think. Shyamalan is money in the bank on midbudget movies. The only two times he's stumbled in the last 25 years is when he went big: The Last Airbender cost $150m and grossed $300m and the Will Smith-starrer After Earth cost $230m and grossed $260m. So even they weren't disastrous. But his other 12 movies? Eleven were hits and only one miss, The Lady In The Water. If he wants $50mb for a genre flick, I'm giving it to him.
Coraline's 15th anniversary rerelease is a big success for AMC's Fathom Events. It grossed $19m worldwide and might finally make this classic 3-D animated film a hit. Here's hoping Henry Selick's flick will hit $180m worldwide. But I won't see it because it still infuriates me I pay $20 a month for my AMC membership but old movies like this one aren't included. It's from a partnership AMC is involved in! I get why concert events and live opera and other stuff from third party companies aren't included. But to see Casablanca or Ghostbusters or say the original Alien, I should pay $15? Absurd. And they're losing out on concession sales, I say. Very few of these movies make the money Coraline makes and if making them part of the monthly AMC membership increases the number of people signing up, AMC would make a lot more money that way.
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.
Movies I saw: Didi is a prototypical Sundance movie. It's a coming of age tale with a big star (Joan Chen) in a supporting role. It's a modest affair, but the specifics of this boy growing up and struggling to fit in somewhere, anywhere developed a cumulative power for me. As I was watching, it went from an amusing little movie to one of my favorites of the year. Alien: Romulus is not my type of movie; I'm very skittish! It's fine and the production design and such are very strong. But the script isn't nearly imaginative enough to keep me engaged. Perhaps the most interesting part–aside from David Jonsson–was the resurrection of Ian Holm. His character from the original is back, thanks to hi-tech allowing a new actor and presumably AI and other digital effects) to allow Holm's face and vocal likeness to be quite convincing. For various reasons, the technical challenges were small (they only needed to reanimate his face and voice) but it's a pretty big supporting role and I bought the illusion completely.
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. 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 new movies and international flicks not on most people's radar; I've decided to put notes for every film and keep them as long as the movie is on the charts. The "mb" refers to a film's reported budget, in millions of US $. So $40mb means a budget of $40m.
1. Deadpool Vs. 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.
2. Alien: Romulus – $80mb.
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. Detective Conan: The Multi-Million Dollar Pentagram –
It stood at $128m before opening in China. No idea of the budget but it's the 27st film in the series and the
highest grossing in Japan, so I assume they're making money.
6. Inside Out 2 –– its total is now $1.626 billion, so it needs another $38m to pass 2019's
remake of The Lion King and become the highest grossing animated film of all time.
7. Stree 2 – with a $6m reported budget and an opening week of $24m ww, this is a welcome
hit for the Hindi portion of the Indian film industry. It's a supernatural comedy horror film; think
Ghostbusters, sort of.
8. Twisters -- a $150mb means I'm still not calling this a hit. Not to worry, it won't lose money for anyone.
9. 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.
11. 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 opens August 10, so maybe it previewed? I'm flying blind here, folks! Now it seems to be called
White Snake: Afloat for English markets.
15. Pilot -- in this Korean comedy, a male commercial pilot is very handsome and so popular he's even a
celebrity of sorts. Then he makes a foolish mistake and can't get a job. So he makes like Dustin Hoffman
and poses as a woman (specifically pretending to be his own little sister) so he can get back to work.
Presumably this concept will not travel well to the U.S.
16. Harold and the Purple Crayon ($40mb) -- I suppose anything can work. But the picture book has no real
plot, just a gentle, wordless spin on imagination. You are literally starting from scratch to turn it into a movie.
And even if they have a plot, it's usually far more suited to a short film (like the best TV specials made from
Dr. Seuss. In this case, it was already turned into a TV series with 13 delightful episodes featuring narration
from Sharon Stone and music by Van Dyke Parks (among others) that capture the charm of the original book
to perfection. This should never have been made. Plus it's budget is a reported $40m? That seems suspiciously
low.
17. Decoded -- a Chinese thriller set during WW II when an autistic math whiz is recruited to break codes for a secret spy agency. With John Cusack as the whiz's professor! Can he draw an audience in the US? I've already seen a trailer in local theaters. But I doubt it, especially given poor reviews.
18. Land of Broken Hearts aka Fu Fu De Sheng – a Chinese romance about a beautiful young woman and a
beautiful young man who become roommates. That's all I know, though the guy does make me want to
dye my hair blue.
19. The 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.
20. Borderlands – this Eli Roth extravaganza starring Cate Blanchett is based on a video game, cost
21. Cuckoo – this horror film cost a reported $7mb.
22. Heartsping: Teenieping of Love – a low budget Korean animated film about a princess and a
cuddly creature? That's all I can gather from the trailer, though the poster seems to be from an
entirely different movie.
24. 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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