Battle at the Box Office 7/15/24

Despicable Me 4 held onto the top spot at the box office over the weekend, but Longlegs was the real standout, with the biggest opening in the history of distributor Neon.

Despicable Me 4 took in another $44.6 million and dropped 40% from last weekend’s holiday box office.  That’s a strong hold, and the movie is now at $211.1 million domestically after two weeks and $437.8 million worldwide.  It’s not going to come anywhere close to Inside Out 2, but it will most likely surpass the original Despicable Me and Despicable Me 3 in the box office and maybe come close to Minions if it stays on the pace it’s on.  Despicable Me 4 is currently the 7th highest-grossing film of 2024 worldwide.

Longlegs was the surprise second place, putting up a solid $22.4 million opening.  That is by far the highest opening ever for distributor Neon and the best horror opening for an original IP since M3GAN in January 2023.  The only issue may be the CinemaScore, which is a pretty terrible C+.  If word of mouth is not great (which seems like it might be based on the Audience score on RottenTomatoes), it could nosedive hard this coming weekend.

Inside Out 2 dropped to third with another $20.7 million, dropping only another 32% from last weekend and staying strong against the competition of Despicable Me 4. It now has $572.5 million domestically and $1.35 billion worldwide. All time, it is the 16th highest-grossing film domestically (unadjusted for inflation), and worldwide, it is the 17th highest-grossing film.

A Quiet Place: Day One and Fly Me to the Moon rounded out the top 5.  With the critical reception mixed, Fly Me to the Moon‘s opening is pretty soft, given its stars.  It could be a slow burn, depending on how much it holds on this coming weekend.  As far as romantic comedies, Fly Me to the Moon‘s opening is around My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3 and While You Were Sleeping.  It’s around $6 million down from the opening of Ticket to Paradise, a similarly pitched, old-school, star-driven romantic comedy.

MaXXXine took a nose dive in its second weekend, dropping to 8th place after a 69% drop from its opening weekend, taking in another $2 million and taking it to $11.7 million for two weeks out.

The Per Theater average went to A24’s Sing Sing, which took in $34,280 in each of the four theaters it played in over the weekend.