Battle at the Box Office 8/12/24
Ryan Reynolds managed to hold off his wife, Blake Lively, as the couple took the top two spots at the box office, with It Ends With Us debuting at #2, while Borderlands bombed epically as predicted.
Deadpool & Wolverine was #1 for a third weekend, making another $54.1 million. That brings it to $494.3 million domestically, and it has crossed over $1 billion worldwide, reaching $1.029 billion. It’s still tracking ahead of Inside Out 2 domestically, so if it continues to have steam, it could be the #1 movie of the summer and potentially the biggest movie of 2024 domestically. It’s currently the 6th highest-grossing film domestically of all time for the MCU and the 11th highest-grossing MCU film worldwide.
It Ends With Us opened with $50 million, one of the best openings in recent memory for a romantic drama. It opened above The Fault in Our Stars and below The Twilight Saga: Eclipse and is, in fact, the highest opening non-Twilight romantic drama of all time. It was the second-best opening for Blake Lively, just barely behind the opening of Green Lantern, which opened to $53.1 million in 2011. Worldwide, the movie has grossed $80 million so far.
Twisters remained strong in third place, dropping 34% and making another $15 million. It now has $222.2 million domestically and $310 million worldwide. It’s the rare modern blockbuster whose gross is heavily weighted on the domestic side, as it doesn’t seem to have much international appeal.
Besides the success of It Ends With Us, the big story was the utter failure of Borderlands. DOA, upon opening with seemingly no one excited for it, the video game adaptation opened to $8.6 million domestically and took 4th place. With a measly $1.4 million outside of the domestic market, the movie opened worldwide for $10 million. The movie cost an estimated $115 million, so it will cost Lionsgate a pretty hefty chunk of change. The critical response was abysmal, and the audience’s reaction was equally bad, with a D+ CinemaScore. It wouldn’t be surprising if it dropped out of the top 10 this coming weekend, as word of mouth will be terrible.
Despicable Me 4 rounded out the top 5 with another $8 million, bringing it to $330.1 domestically and $807.8 million worldwide,
Trap took a tumble in its second weekend, dropping to 6th place from 3rd with $6.7 million. It now has $28.6 million domestically. Cuckoo opened just above fellow Neon horror movie Longlegs, which is in its fifth week of release. Cuckoo took in $3 million, well below Longlegs opening of just over $22 million. Cuckoo got a C+ CinemaScore, which is fairly typical for a horror movie, but it doesn’t seem like it will be the breakout hit that Longlegs, which outgrossed Furiosa domestically.
