To see our other box office top 10 breakdowns please go here.
Here are the bullet points for this weekend’s top 10: How to Think Like a Man Too barely held off 22 Jump Street to take the top spot, Jersey Boys did Rock of Ages-style business (translation: not good) but the slowness of older audiences gives the studio hope, Maleficent crossed the $500 million worldwide mark, and Godzilla is just killing it in China right now.
Top 10 Estimated Domestic Totals (6/20-6/22)
1. How to Think Like a Man Too (Opening Weekend)
- Opening Weekend Gross=$30 million
- Budget=$24 million
Foreign: Not currently scheduled to open outside of North America until August.
Earlier this year, Kevin Hart’s Ride Along debuted with $41 million on the way to a $134 million domestic haul. Less a month after that, Kevin Hart’s About Last Night opened with $25 million, ultimately topping out at just $48.6 million. Now four months after that, How to Think Like a Man Too bows with $30 million, which is great, even if it is below the first How to Think Like a Man‘s $33 million debut 2 years ago. The point is that normally when an actor is in that many films over that condensed a period of time at least one of them turns into a box office failure. However, while these films are all popularly attributed to Hart both About Last Night and How to Think Like a Man Too are ensembles in which he is but one piece, although you wouldn’t guess that based on the advertising. Moreover, not one of these three films cost more than $25 million to make. About Last Night might seem like the obvious box office disappointment of the trio, but its budget was a mere $12.5 million thus making a $48.6 million gross fairly fantastic.
Of course, my argument totally falls apart when you remind me that back in December Kevin Hart also showed up in Grudge Match, which managed just $29 million domestic on a $40 million budget. However, the audience for Grudge Match would certainly seem to be very difference than the audience for Hart’s trio of 2014 releases. True to form, Hart currently has 2 scheduled releases for 2015.
2. 22 Jump Street
- Weekend Gross=$29 million
- Total Gross to Date=$111.4 million
- Budget=$50 million
Foreign: Currently, it has an international gross of $38.2 million for a worldwide total of $149.6 million.
22 Jump Street dang near repeated atop the chart, dipping just 49.2% this weekend, which is nearly identical to what Neighbors (48.9%) did earlier this year. Among other recent R-rated comedies, that’s definitely a better hold than either of the front-loaded Hangover sequels, but not as good as Ted or the first Hangover. With this type of business, will they now feel obligated to turn one of those fake sequel titles from the closing credits into 23 Jump Street?
3. How to Train Your Dragon 2
- Weekend Gross=$25.3 million
- Total Gross to Date=$95.1 million
- Budget=$145 million
Foreign: Currently, it has an international gross of $76.3 million for a worldwide total of $171.4 million.
This is a 48.8% drop from last weekend, which might seem high but is actually pretty much on par with recent June/July animated releases like Brave (48.3%), Despicable Me 2 (47.4%) and not too horribly worse than Monsters University (44.7%) or Madagascar 3 (43.5%). The problem is every single one of those had bigger opening weekends than Train Your Dragon 2, which is clearly falling in line with many of the summer’s other big movies: it’s doing pretty good, but maybe not good enough, at least not based on what had been expected.
4. Jersey Boys (Opening Weekend)
- Weekend Gross=$13.5 million
- Budget=$40 million
Foreign: $1.6 million in extremely limited release, making for a worldwide debut of $15.1 million.
You remember how nearly 80% of Fault in Our Stars‘ opening weekend audience was below the age of 25? Yeah, something similar just happened for Jersey Boys, just on the opposite end of the age spectrum. According to THR, 71% of Jersey Boy’s audience was over the age of 50, 84% over the age of 35. As a result, the studio is sort of brushing off this $13.5 million, which is in the same ballpark as recent jukebox-musical-turned-movie Rock of Ages ($14.4 million opening/$38.5 total domestic gross/$59 million total worldwide gross). It actually had stars you’d recognize, like Russell Brand, Paul Giamatti, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Malin Akerman, and Tom freakin’ Cruise. Jersey Boys., unless you’re familiar with the show’s original Broadway cast, has pretty much no one you’ve ever heard of beside Christopher Walken
The reason Warner Bros. isn’t sweating this opening is three-fold 1) We’ve known Jersey Boys was tracking for a soft debut for a while now; 2) This is actually Clint Eastwood’s best opening weekend as a director since Space Cowboys scored $18 million 14 years ago; 3) They know their audience, and old people tend not to rush out to see movies, thus allowing older-skewering titles like Last Vegas and Monuments Men to actually stick around for longer than you’d expect based upon their debuts.
5. Maleficent
- Weekend Gross=$13 million
- Total Gross to Date=$185.9 million
- Budget=$175 million
Foreign: Currently, it has an international gross of $335.6 million for a worldwide total of $521.8 million.
Maleficent is now the biggest worldwide hit of Angelina Jolie’s career, besting Mr. and Mrs. Smith‘s $478 million worldwide haul. So, it’s got that going for it, which is nice. It is still pacing behind prior revisionist fairy tale films Alice in Wonderland and Oz The Great and Powerful, whose 17-day totals stood at $293 and $198 million (vs. Maleficient’s $186 million) respectively. So, it’s got that going against it. But it cost at least $25 million less to make than those two. So, it’s got that going for it.
6. The Edge of Tomorrow
- Weekend Gross=$10.3 million
- Total Gross to Date=$74.5 million
- Budget=$178 million
Foreign: Currently, it has an international gross of $218 million for a worldwide total of $292.8 million.
The word is clearly out: Edge of Tomorrow is amazing. It’s meager box office biz to date as been an excuse for sites like thedissolve.com to exclaim “1,000 noogies go to the people who claim to want original, non-franchise blockbusters but didn’t turn out to support Edge of Tomorrow.” However, ever since its sub-$30 million opening weekend Tomorrow has posted entirely uncommon holds for a summer blockbuster, dipping just 42.5% last weekend and 37.4% this weekend. That’s light years better than Tom Cruise’s other sci-fi films, like Minority Report, War of the Worlds, and Oblivion, and can be certainly seen as a sign that word-of-mouth is strong. It’s probably not strong enough, though, considering that as impressive as those percentages sound we’re still talking about a $178 million movie standing at just $75 million domestic after 17 days. This makes Edge of Tomorrow this year’s Pacific Rim-the well-liked movie which inexplicably tanks domestically but cleans up everywhere else.
7. The Fault in Our Stars
- Weekend Gross=$8.6 million
- Total Gross to Date=$98.7 million
- Budget=$12 million
Foreign: Currently, it has an international gross of $64.6 million for a worldwide total of $163.3 million.
Fault plunged 69% last weekend, and a far better 42% this weekend. Pish-posh. It all matters not when after 17 days your movie has grossed 8 times its budget domestically, 13 times worldwide. It’s that type of business which has led to a sea change in Hollywood, where YA novels are still hot properties, but not so much the supernatural ones, instead the “grounded in reality” ones.
8. X-Men: Days of Future Past
- Weekend Gross=$6.2 million
- Total Gross to Date=$216.7 million
- Budget=$210-240 million
Foreign: Currently, it has an international gross of $475.2 million for a worldwide total of $692 million.
Days of Future Past’s worldwide earnings will likely topple 2014′s other comic book movies, a list that currently includes Amazing Spider-Man 2 ($702 million) and Captain America: The Winter Soldier ($710 million). It has returned the X-Men franchise to totals it hasn’t seen in a long time, but given the boost it’s getting from 3D/IMAX sales shouldn’t it be doing a little better than this? That’s for Fox to decide since only they truly know how much they sunk into budget and marketing. Here’s how Days of Future Past currently stacks up to the original X-Men trilogy, none of which had the benefit of 3D/Imax, after you adjust for ticket price inflation:
- X-Men: The Last Stand (2006) – $284 million (adjusted)/$234 million (unadjusted)
- X2: X-Men United (2003) – $283 million (adjusted)/$214 million (unadjusted)
- X-Men (2000) – $232 million (adjusted)/$157 million (unadjusted)
- X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) – $216 million
9. Chef
- Weekend Gross=$1.84 million
- Total Gross to Date=$16.9 million
- Budget=They’re not telling
Foreign: No official foreign box office information yet.
John Favreau’s independently produced Chef has now outlasted both a Adam Sandler/Drew Berrymore romantic comedy (Blended), a Disney family film starring John Hamm (Million Dollar Arm), an R-rated western from the guy who brought us Ted (A Million Ways to Die in the West), and a glorious Seth Rogen-Zac Efron team-up (Neighbors). Granted, every single one of those made more money, but Chef is doing it the old school way: organically building its audience (and number of theaters) as positive word of mouths spreads, ala what Blue Jasmine did last summer.
10. Godzilla
- Weekend Gross=$1.82 million
- Total Gross to Date=$194.9 million
- Budget=$160 million
Foreign: Currently, it has an international gross of $282.4 million for a worldwide total of $477.3 million.
Godzilla started with a mighty roar, scoring what remains second biggest opening weekend of the summer, but its ever-dwindling returns since then likely places it into that Prometheus/World War Z/Pacific Rim territory of films whose sequels will take quite a while to arrive, if they ever do. Or so you’d think based upon its domestic performance. However, Godzilla just debuted with $37 million in China last weekend, meaning while its domestic run is dying down it is only just beginning its run in the world’s second leading market for film. Remember that Pacific Rim took in $111 million from China alone last year.
What Fell Out of the Top 10?:
A Million Ways to Die in the West (#8 to #11) and Neighbors (#9 to #12). Neighbors exits the top 10 with a total domestic gross ($145 million) which is 8 times its budget ($18 million). Million Ways to Die, on the other hand, just barely made its $40 million budget back in domestic gross, and will have to turn to foreign markets to have any chance at actually turning a profit.
Elsewhere, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is now around half a million short of the $200 million mark in total domestic gross. When struggling to pass $200 million is your franchise’s rock bottom moment you’ve been living a charmed life.
What’s Up Next?: We’re getting our fourth ever Transformers movie, this one called Age of Extinction, and its addition of robots riding robot dinosaurs seems to have re-energized the fan-base. Transformers is coming off the franchise’s first ever entry into the $1 billion worldwide gross club, but that was 3 years ago.
Source:BoxOfficeMojo.com