Alas, M3GAN has been slain. But more on that in a bit.
Our number one movie is F1: The Movie, which is behaving like a true old school blockbuster with a healthy premiere of $55 million (worth noting that includes $10 million in previews, so again, we are really talking about a four-day weekend here). As the “grown-up” flavor of the month, there could be plenty of gas left in the tank even with an avalanche of major tentpoles on the horizon in July. Marketing was fantastic for F1, taking full advantage of it being from the director of Top Gun: Maverick (who is also, by the way, the same director of Tron: Legacy, so there’s some fun trivia for you). More importantly, reviews and audience scores helped propel this to a victory lap, and we haven’t even gotten into how the real money is going to come from overseas. Once again, it is good to be Warner Bros. in 2025.
Unfortunately, it isn’t a good time to be a killer doll. Once tracking for an opening of above $30 million (see why we should never trust long-term forecasting?), M3GAN 2.0 got shut down before it even had a chance to make a killing…and that’s with a CinemaScore which is higher than that of the original! Universal didn’t treat this film lightly (it had a Super Bowl teaser), even if they did make the weird decision to open it right before their own Jurassic World: Rebirth next week. But none of that matters now. M3GAN: Judgement Day has flopped hard with a debut of only $10 million, which could be very bad news for any hopes for the franchise’s future (which already has a spin-off in the works starring a sex bot, and I’m not kidding).
Was M3GAN not fit to play with the big kids of summer? Was the tonal shift too much for audiences? Though it has a reputation for being a campy comedy, rewatch the original film and you’ll find that it is still a horror movie. For the sequel, they threw that out the window and gave its titular villain the Don’t Breathe 2 antihero treatment, and while I think the idea of two dolls trying to kill each other sounds fun, I clearly don’t speak for everyone. I was rooting for this to do well, but sadly the failure here isn’t that surprising.
And speaking of unsurprising things, 28 Years Later predictably took a nosedive in its second weekend. I liked it, but it’s a very strange film which is understandably rubbing those who expected a straightforward thrill ride the wrong way. Call it an arthouse film disguised as a summer blockbuster, or a summer blockbuster disguised as an arthouse film. The good news for fans is the second installment in the intended trilogy The Bone Temple has already been filmed. The bad news is the third one has yet to be greenlit. Currently 28 Years Later has made $50 million worth of skull pyramids.
Last week’s big story was Elio having Pixar’s lowest opening ever, and sadly things aren’t looking much better for it now. It could be worse, as it had some decent weekdays and was actually ahead of M3GAN this weekend. But excluding Onward (which had its theatrical run literally cut short by COVID), and last year’s “re-releases” of the films that went straight-to-streaming, it’s looking like Elio will become the first Pixar outing to not reach the $100 million mark stateside. Disney really should’ve known better than to compete against Toothless.
Anyway, the top ten, via The Numbers
