Warner Bros. Pictures’ “Superman” flew past the competition for the second straight week, grossing an estimated $57.25 million to top the box office this weekend.
James Gunn’s reboot grossed $122 million in its opening weekend, according to data provided by Comscore. It has now grossed $235 million domestically and $406.8 million worldwide, according to Comscore.
“We’ve seen really strong daily holds and usually that is indicative of word of mouth taking in, especially on a big film like this that already opened pretty well,” said Shawn Robbins, director of analytics at Fandango and founder and owner of Box Office Theory.
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“Superman” and Universal Pictures’ “Jurassic World Rebirth, which came in at No. 2 during its third week ($23.4 million), held off this weekend’s openers, including Sony Pictures’ “I Know What You Did Last Summer” ($13 million) and Paramount Pictures’ “Smurfs” ($11 million).
“When movies open this big, sometimes they drop off significantly in their second and third weekends. But it seems to be a pattern this year, particularly this summer, where you have blockbusters holding in there,” said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst at Comscore.
Sony’s first release of the slasher franchise “I Know What You Did Last Summer” opened in 1997 and grossed $252.14 million worldwide, adjusted for inflation. Sony also distributed three “Smurfs” films between 2011 and 2017. The third movie, “Smurfs: The Lost Village,” grossed $197 million worldwide in 2017, according to Box Office Mojo.
The latest “Smurfs” and “I Know What You Did Last Summer” movies weren’t especially well-reviewed by critics, but Daniel Loria, editorial director at BoxOffice Pro, said those reviews matter less because they are established franchises.
“Everybody 30 and over knows what ‘I Know What You Did Last Summer’ is, and I think family audiences are very well aware of ‘Smurfs,’” he said. “Buying a ticket for something called ‘The Smurfs,’ you know what you’re doing regardless of reviews.”
Dergarabedian said the success of “Superman” and “Jurassic World Rebirth” were “formidable competitors” for this weekend’s openers and that the box office is currently an “incredibly competitive marketplace.”
In recent years, studios have struggled to fill theater schedules with new releases, in part due to movies going directly to streaming services and delays in production from the SAG-AFTRA strikes of 2023. Theaters are now glad to have new content on a weekly basis, Robbins said.
“This summer has had something major open every weekend,” he said, adding that this weekend’s openers are “a very modest slate.”
Nearly two months since its record-breaking Memorial Day weekend opening, Disney’s “Lilo & Stitch” is now the first Motion Picture Association movie this year to gross more than $1 billion globally. That makes it the second-highest earner globally, behind China’s animated “Ne Zha 2,” which grossed more than $1.8 billion worldwide, according to Box Office Mojo.
Warner Bros. Pictures’ “A Minecraft Movie,” which is No. 1 at the domestic box office ($423.9 million) this year, fell short of the $1 billion mark worldwide, earning $955 million, according to Box Office Mojo.
Due to the performances of major hits like “Lilo & Stitch,” “A Minecraft Movie” and now “Superman,” the box office has received much-needed boosts. But the summer box office sits at just $2.6 billion, according to Comscore data.
Dergarabedian still has faith that the summer box office can roughly gross another $1.6 billion to hit the $4 billion mark, with the help of “The Fantastic Four.”
“Then we have a cumulative selection of films in August that are really going to drive a big, final month of the summer movie season,” he said.
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