Box Office: 6 Hot Takes From a Refreshingly "Normal" $152 Million Weekend
'Sinners' and 'Mission: Impossible 8' both topped $350 million worldwide as 'Karate Kid: Legends' underwhelmed with a $21 million domestic debut.
When considering the post-Memorial Day weekend, an estimated total of $152 million is arguably better than satisfactory for such a “weekend 22 or weekend 23” on which Hollywood didn’t at least try to offer up a big deal tentpole. Yes, it’s below the $166 million achieved in 2014, which also featured the $67 million debut of Maleficent. Likewise, while this year’s domestic totals for this respective weekend fall short of the $205 million accumulated in 2023, $123 million of that was from Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.
However, it’s way above the $107 million total in 2018, with a free-falling Solo topping alongside the $11 million opening of Adrift and the $4.7 million debut of Upgrade leading the newbies pack. A digression, but as we’ve learned many times over the decades, there’s little more harmful to the overall box office than a presumed all-quadrant, 2,400-pound gorilla that scares off the competition and then underperforms (Transformers: Age of Extinction, at least domestically) or flops (Joker: Folie a Deux).
There is a slight (but not absolute; see The Sum of All Fears and Up) “late May or early June?” distinction regarding how likely a studio is to place a presumed big-ass tentpole (like Wonder Woman) on this weekend. Inflation aside, $152 million falls right between the $138 million amassed in 2015 (happy tenth anniversary to Dwayne Johnson’s San Andreas) and the $174 million earned in 2018, as Godzilla: King of the Monsters underwhelmed with a $48 million debut alongside Rocketman’s $26 million launch.
So yes, with a cume 126% above last year’s “sky is falling” frame, this is closer to what “normal” should look like. Once again, credit goes to both this weekend’s newbies, the towering Memorial Day weekend releases, and a consistent slate of April and May releases to ease the burden placed on any one picture. Without further ado, here are my six key takeaways…