Ewan McGregor and Anne Hathaway in the End of Oak Street. Photo credit: Warner Bros.
As our summer box office coverage begins to close at the Box Office Report and we prepare for Award Season and Holiday Season box office in the coming months, Spider-Man: Brand New Day and The Odyssey took one last monstrous swing to prove that this summer was about the Zendaya and Tom Holland. With The End of Oak Street and Paw Patrol: The Dino Movie hitting theatres for families with teens and families with toddlers, it has to feel like an asteroid has hit the dinosaurs once again, as they become more examples in a long line of audiences not showing up for dinosaurs if it isn’t the Jurassic Park franchise.
Finishing at number one in its third weekend, Spider-Man brought in a crisp $70M estimate. While the 50% drop from its second to third weekend is steep, when you’ve already made well over $1B, it’s hard to have a big third weekend. That’s the nature of everybody seeing it. The big part of this milestone is that it’s the second-fastest to the number of any film behind only 2019’s Avengers: Endgame. Not only did Sony need this run after their Spider-Man universe films continuously failed, but the MCU desperately needed it after the underperformance of Captain America: Brave New World, Thunderbolts*, and The Fantastic Four: The First Steps.
The post-Endgame Chapek-era MCU choices led to a stark, no pun intended, downturn for Marvel, even with Spider-Man: No Way Home just missing the $2B mark. With its follow-up surpassing it and likely to continue making bank, this is the shot in the arm the franchise needed ahead of Avengers: Doomsday this December, which they hope can be as big as the previous Avengers films. How far can Brand New Day go? It remains to be seen, but unlike most films we generally talk about global box office for, opening in every major market at once is going to hurt its legs internationally.
In second, a Tom Holland film that co-stars Zendaya and Jon Bernthal. No, it’s not Spider-Man, it’s once again The Odyssey, still in second despite finishing its fifth weekend. It made $23M domestic to edge out The End of Oak Street, but with it now having opened massively in China, eyes are on its global cume. It’s at an estimated $1.29B on the heels of the $1.3B made by Deadpool and Wolverine. Why’s that an important milestone? Once the Odyssey reaches it, which is a formality and probably has been for weeks, it will become the highest-grossing R-rated film in history. We’ve talked about the Odyssey ad-nauseum, and we also extensively covered the R-rated records in last week’s BOR.
Only two other films, the aforementioned dino-flicks, even made $4M this weekend. The End of Oak Street opened to ~$21M, which for an original sci-fi period piece going up against this competition, isn’t an outright terrible number. However, a film making less than $50M globally on its opening weekend isn’t the most encouraging sign, granted it does have more markets to open in. The film, on a reported budget up to $92M, would need close to $300M to break even on the high-end of the reported budget. While Anne Hathaway’s having a great year, I’m not sure she has that much box office pull on her own, and its early word-of-mouth is only so so for a PG-13 action adventure sci-fi.
On the subject of original films, while there’s very little that strongly reported this week, Obsession has reached $495M and is only $5M away from becoming the first original film of the 2020s to reach the $500M milestone. Elemental currently is the highest-grossing original film of the decade at just over $496M. Its breakout star, Inde Navarrette, has already book a tentpole role, announced at D23 as Rogue in the upcoming X-Men films.
Paw Patrol, the other big film this weekend, had a bit of a muted opening coming in lower than the last one if estimates hold, but well above the first movie of the trilogy. It’s interesting that this films haven’t done better, though Paramount and now by extension Skydance after the merger, haven’t done a particularly good job at marketing them to the demo where Paw Patrol is a massive IP. But we’re also eight years removed from its peak viability as a franchise, and all of its fans from that era have grown out of what’s clear capped for pre-school enjoyment. These films aren’t huge, but they’re smaller budget, and the last one made over $200M on just a $30M budget despite topping out at less than $70M domestically. The franchise is immensely popular overseas. This should do fine.
While we like Will Gluck here at the BOR thanks to how fun Easy A is and for launching the career of probably the best actress of this generation in Emma Stone, his latest film is a bomb of massive proportions relative to a small budget in a time where it could have done extremely well as a form of counterprogramming the very male-heavy theatrical slate. It made just $2M and finished ninth at a box office where only four films made more than $4M in just its second weekend. At a $25M budget and having not even made half of that back before losing its steam at a $75M breakeven point, the Monica Barbaro/Callum Turner two-hander is going to lose a significant amount of money for Comcast. Whether or not the bomb is on the stars, neither of whom have led a massive hit, though both are tremendously acclaimed actors, or the fact that Gluck never quite leaned into the steaminess of the concept can be debated, but it’s not a good return-on-investment for NBCUniversal, and certainly can’t go unmentioned.
This week did see a lot of 10th anniversary re-releases. If you missed La La Land, Train to Busan, or Your Name. theatrically, all of them are in wide-release right now. La La Land, the movie that won Emma Stone her first of two Best Actress Academy Award trophies, is obviously the headliner there, but Your Name and Train to Busan were so groundbreaking for their time and have found a massive audience across streaming. In a week where there are two films concurrently capitulating the competition at the box office, this is a way for studios to fulfill contracts and make additional revenue that they otherwise wouldn’t get without having to sacrifice potential box office for their upcoming slate. Audiences get to see movies on the big screen that they discovered through different home video methods, studios get money they otherwise wouldn’t get, and theatres get more options to play. It’s a rare perfect storm that allows for rereleases to be so wide spread, but one of the small victories for everybody involved.
Next week, however, there’s quite a few releases, so maybe internally studios anticipate the Odyssey and Spider-Man to cool off and that they’ve weathered the storm. Jason Statham’s Mutiny promises to be the exact same fare he always does, but outside of the recent Shelter which still at least recouped its budget for the small distribution company Black Bear that have yet to have a financial hit, Statham’s films always make money and it has Lionsgate behind it. It won’t be the box office story of the year, but it should do solidly well.
A24’s Anthony Bourdain biopic, Tony, starring The Holdovers breakout Dom Sessa opens. This looks to be the first release of awards as it is primarily an Oscar player for Sessa, though it’s still early in the season. With the lack of prestige films currently in theatres, this does promise to do decent, though again not crazy box office.
The horror demo, which always shows up between August and October, has Insidious: Out of the Further, promising to take one of horrors most bankable franchises outside of its main thread and explore the universe. The franchise generally does around $150M, but the last one threatened $200M and horror franchises have been overperforming recently, so if it’s good with strong word-of-mouth, perhaps it’s a sleeper hit?
There’s also the 25th anniversary of The Fast and the Furious, which is getting PLF treatment at AMC theatres, a new Anna Faris ensemble comedy Spa Weekend, and Hot Spot, a Polish sci-fi original starring Noomi Rapace.
Suffice to say, next week we should have more to discuss.
Jameus Mooney is an entertainment writer for Comicbook Clique, having covered the entertainment industry for years. You can follow him on Twitter here, and Letterboxd here. You can also listen to his horror podcast, The 2:17 Horror Podcast, at the DeathArts XIII YouTube channel.