WORLDWIDE BOX OFFICE FOR WEEK ENDING AUGUST 11, 2024
A film's total gross for the entire previous week is followed by its worldwide total to date.
1. Deadpool Vs. Wolverine -- $206m/$1,030m worldwide
3. Successor -- $60m/$427m ww
4. Despicable Me 4 –– $55m/$807m ww
5. Inside Out 2 –– $39m/$1,594m ww (needs $71m)
6. Twisters -- $36m/$310m ww
7. Trap -- $25m/$45m ww
8. Upstream -- $24m/$26m ww
9. Bai She: Fu Sheng aka White Snake: Afloat -- $20m/$25m ww
10. Decoded -- $17m/$42m ww
12. Pilot -- $8m/$20m ww
13. Land of Broken Hearts aka Fu Fu De Sheng – $7m ww debut
14. A Place Called Silence -- $6m/$191m ww
15. Harold and the Purple Crayon -- $6m/$15m ww
16. Evacuate From The 21st Century -- $4m/$15m ww
17. Cuckoo – $3m ww debut
18. Heartsping: Teenieping of Love – $3m ww
19. Bad Boys: Ride or Die –– $2m/$400m ww
20. A Quiet Place: Day One –– $2m/$261m ww
21. Fly Me To The Moon -- $2m/$40m ww
23. Escape -- $1m/$18m ww
24. Pleasant Goat and Grey Wolf 9 -- $1m/$12m ww
25. The Fabulous Four -- $1m/$3m 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
It's the dog days of August but you wouldn't know that from the box office. Deadpool Vs. Wolverine is about to pass Joker to become the highest grossing R rated film of all time. I'm not big on slicing and dicing movie categories to generate excitement. The highest grossing action film starring a woman over 30! The highest grossing Western! And so on. But R-rated is worth noting.
As is the highest grossing animated film of all time. I'm calling it! Inside Out 2 will pass 2019's The Lion King in a few weeks and become the highest grossing animated film of all time, full stop. This week it grossed $40m and only needs another $71m to claim the crown. Girls rule! Now instead of a TV series, where is the Inside Out film with a boy and all of his emotions? PG-13 once he hits puberty, of course.
And wow did It Ends With Us deliver. I hope and expect Blake Lively has an escalating clause for every box office goal it passes. Its reported budget is $25m and it opened to...$80m worldwide. $80 million! It Ends With Us is a smash hit from box office alone on its opening weekend. So a mid-sized budget with a serious angle and a female star clicked at the box office. Go figure!
China's Successor is approaching phenomenon status as the comedy about a family pinning all their hopes on a son at school is fast approaching the half billion mark, thanks to grosses at $430 million and counting.
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: Kneecap -- I liked it. Brits Out! (I say this as a Brit.) An exuberant comic drama, Kneecap is a good film for its director and the three members of the Irish hip hop group acquit themselves very well indeed as actors. Not life changing, but fun. I'd love to see Didi, but it hasn't opened in Birmingham Alabama yet.
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.
MISSING IN ACTION
Longlegs -- After grossing $14m worldwide last week and hitting $92m, this Nicolas Cage horror flick
disappears off the charts and everyone now seems to agree it's at $90m. Now that's scary.
Raayan -- Similarly, the Tamil/Indian action film Raayan hit $9m last week for a total of $18m.
Now it's off the charts entirely.
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. It Ends With Us -- reported $25mb. Based on the Colleen Hoover blockbuster novel about a woman fighting to escape domestic violence.
3. 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.
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. Inside Out 2 –– its total is now $1.555 billion, so it needs another $109m to pass 2019's
remake of The Lion King and become the highest grossing animated film of all time.
6. Twisters -- a $150mb means I'm still not calling this a hit.
9. 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.
10. Decoded -- a Chinese thriller set during WW II when an autistic math whiz is recruited to break codes for a secret spy agency.
12. 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.
13. 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.
14. A Place Called Silence -- this is a Chinese remake of a 2022 Taiwanese thriller...written
and directed by the same person as the original. It seems a sort of thriller built around school bullying.
15. 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.
16. Evacuate From The 21st Century -- a Chinese action sci-fi film (and maybe a comedy?) where three teens in 1999 send their souls to 2019 and accidentally save the world. All I did as a teen was sneak a beer once in a while.
17. Cuckoo – this horror film cost a reported $7mb to make and opened with $3m ww.
18. 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.
19. Bad Boys: Ride or Die –– They're claiming a $100m budget but with Will Smith and Martin
Lawrence surely getting major coin for their participation, I'm being generous to call
this a hit, even at $400m. But no one is going to lose money and Bad Boys 5 will happen.
20. A Quiet Place: Day One –– it cost about $70m to make so this is a hit. But did they plan for a
sequel to this prequel?
21. Fly Me To The Moon -- an adult romantic comedy should not cost $100m to make. But even if it were
delivered at $40m (stars Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum don't come cheap), it would be a flop. It
happens.
25. The Fabulous Four -- It's Bridesmaids for the senior set, with Susan Sarandon, Bette Midler,
Megan Mullally and Sheryl Lee Ralph in on the hijinks.
27. MaXXXine -- you wanna make money? Make a cheap horror film.
29. Kinds of Kindness ($15mb) -- Winding down at $13m, it didn't even match its $15m reported
budget. But given it's an anthology film, this is a success of a sort and it will prove a lucrative library
title.
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.
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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