It may have been the fourth of July, but fittingly enough, the American box office got aid from the French.
Our number one movie, as everyone expected, is Minions & Monsters, although as you’ve no doubt heard by now it fell well below expectations with a take of $36 million over three days. That’s technically the lowest opening in the Despicable franchise and the second-lowest for Illumination behind only 2023’s Migration, although that film is an odd duck (ha!) in that it made more than ten times its opening weekend by the time it had flown out of theaters. Tracking had the Minions farting up (wait, why did I willingly type that?) $80 million over the five-day holiday, but it had to settle for roughly $60 million instead. Once again, I must ask if tracking is even relevant anymore.
Should anyone be hitting the panic button? Are the Minions about to go extinct from cinemas? Not really. Yes, we must address this is underperforming. Yes, it is paling in comparison to the opening of 2022’s COVID-delayed The Rise of Gru (which pulled off a heist of $107 million! Wow!). But Illumination is a French animation studio, which helps keep the costs down. Minions and Monsters only cost $85 million to produce and has already brought in $160 million globally. Compare that to Toy Story 5, which reportedly cost as much as $275 million (how???). In other words, these well-reviewed Minions are still going to make some cash.
Performing above tracking is Young Washington, the biopic that tells the true story of how he wrote the world’s simplest earworm about a bridge. Like many Angel Studios releases, this looked…fine. And it looked fine enough to sell $19 million worth of tickets (now whether or not all of those seats were actually filled is up for debate). A sequel, titled 1776, is moving ahead, meaning that one Robot Chicken sketch will soon be real.
Meanwhile there is no happy ending for Supergirl, which is crashing and burning on a level that is unfortunately comparable to Joker 2. It won’t reach $100 million stateside when it really kind of needed to for the sake of optics. This is only the second film in James Gunn’s supposed mega-cinematic universe and the box office cracks are already starting to show. Again, as I said last week, I liked it. But it simply wasn’t what most audiences wanted from a Supergirl outing.
Anyway, the top ten, via Deadline
- Minions & Monsters (Uni) 4,243 theaters, Fri $16.5M, Sat $9.4M Sun $10.4M 3-day $36.4M, 5-day $61.4M/Wk 1
- Toy Story 5 (Dis) 3,975 (-450) theaters Fri $13.7M (-36% from prev Friday) Sat $7.5M Sun $9.8M, 3-day $31M (-56%), Total $366.3M/Wk 3
- Young Washington (Angel) 2,700 theaters, Fri $7.5M Sat $7.6M Sun $5.6M 3-day $20.8M/Wk 1
- Supergirl (WB) 3,602 theaters, Fri $3.6M (-80%) Sat $2.5M Sun $3.5M 3-day $9.6M(-74%)/Total $58.4M/Wk 2
- Disclosure Day (Uni) 2,702 (-655) theaters, Fri $2.2M (-4%) Sat $1.8M Sun $1.9M 3-day $6M (-27%), Total $105.3M/Wk 4
- Obsession (Foc) 2,640 (-325) theaters, Fri $2.1M (-29%) Sat $1.3M Sun $1.75M 3-day $5.3M (-45%) Total $245.3M/Wk 8
- Backrooms (A24) 2,079 (-317) theaters, Fri $1.49M (+15%) Sat $791K Sun $1M 3-day $3.3M (-23%),Total $190.4M/Wk 6
- Jackass: Best and Last (Par) 2,855 theatrs, Fri $1.2M (-68%) Sat $665K Sun $835K 3-day $2.7M (-68%), Total $14.69M/Wk 2
- Scary Movie (Par) 1,158 (-846) theaters, Fri $475K (-49%), Sat $300K Sun $325K 3-day $1.1M (-63%), Total $106.2M/Wk 5
- The Invite (A24) 28 (+21) theaters Fri $314,6K (+101%) Sat $216K Sun $270K 3-day $800,7K (+111%) Total $1.37M /Wk 2