Third weekend of July 2025
As expected, we padded our lead over 2024 last weekend by a decent amount; and even though we don’t have a new film grossing as much as the $81 million Twisters contributed last year, the 2nd weekend of Superman should be good enough to make it a tie (or close to a tie) this weekend.
But next weekend should be a wipeout compared to the same weekend last year. Last year on the last weekend of July, Deadpool & Wolverine showed how Disney could elevate an IP that Fox did a good job with (when they were the custodians of it), opening to $211 million (nearly double the opening weekend of the two Fox Deadpool films). This year we have a Marvel IP that Fox struggled with (to say the least) and it will be super interesting to see how Disney’s reboot can wash the Fox taste out of the Marvel fanship’s mouths. When Deadpool was at Fox, the Rotten Tomato critics scores were 84% and 85% (with similar fan scores), but the critics scores for the 3 Fan Four movies at Fox were 27%, 37% and 9% (the fans scores were a little higher but still sucked). The Fan Four IP was abused so badly at Fox it needed a safe house and a restraining order. So as we get closer to next weekend and you hear the usual clueless and lazy takes in the trade press about Fan Four (because ‘that’s what a summer Marvel usually does’), remember this is a really tough hill for Disney to climb and it’s a little different than anything we’ve seen before. This is kind of like when you go into the powder room at a party and someone has been there before and…well…you know, something lingered. And no matter how much Glade you spray or matches you light, when you walk out of the powder room you tell the next person in line ‘that was the person before me’. If anyone is good with Glade and matches, it’s Disney (they’ve been doing a little of it lately with their own Marvel properties), but if this doesn’t reach the heights of a normal summer Marvel, it wasn’t them, it was the person before them.
Speaking of the trade press, this will be one of those weekends that they will dine out on, and will probably rekindle the battle cry ‘Hollywood is out of ideas’. Two of the wide films opening this weekend are reboots of old IP’s, and looking at the critical takes on them, it certainly doesn’t look like there was an idea behind a reboot that offered any fresh ideas; and the question will come up ‘who asked for this?’. Of course the answer is the accountants, and as long as you have decision makers telling creators ‘we’ll lean toward known IP’, you’re gonna have situations like this where everyone squints at the project, holds their nose and says ’sure, it’s different enough to greenlight’; but you have a pipeline to fill and you gotta make something. Because this situation isn’t that unusual these days, it doesn’t stick out as much on a normal weekend, but when you have two of them on the same weekend, it highlights this issue. That doesn’t mean this is a bad thing fiscally, both marketing departments did a nice job getting these tired ideas open to a decent number and neither film is terribly expensive, so the financial side of this probably isn’t terrible. But, ironically, in the ‘glass half empty’ world the trade press lives in, this ends up being the same rehash of ideas in their columns that they complain about in the movies*.
Anyway, based on something I heard at a Astronomer HR sexual harassment seminar, here are some thoughts on the weekend box-office.
Superman - The release date for this film has worked out so this has a really nice cushy environment in the 2nd weekend. They kept the bulk of their PLF’s and there’s really no substantial films opening this weekend; and in the middle of summer that’s about as good as you could hope for. It looks good, but I wish it was a little better. The drop from last Friday is about the same as what we saw on Guardians of the Galaxy Vol III, but well short of the true outliers like BarbenHeimer. Looks good enough for a 50% drop from last week, and when you back out the gross from the non Friday, Saturday and Sunday income, it’s an apples to apples drop of 40% from last week. But it should end up in the low 60’s.
Jurassic World Rebirth - Looks pretty standard for a tentpole at this point in the run, down about 45% for a weekend in the low 20’s.
I Know You Just Did This For The Fee What You Did Last Summer - They had a pretty good opening day yesterday, but it’s not great today, and they may have let the air out of the balloon with the previews. The exits are just okay and yesterday’s number showed there is still a fan base here, but the fans may have gone last night (without those pesky tagalongs), right now it looks pretty flat. However, yesterday’s gross should be enough to eek out 3rd place for a gross around $13 million.
Smurfs - Paramount showed there’s still some brains in Distribution, and with a movie that has fanship but not great playability they decided to open on Friday instead of Thursday. The numbers today are pretty good, and it looks like the casting of Rihanna is paying off and the AA audience is showing up in a pretty substantial way. The AA theaters dominate the top of the list here and the grosses are pretty good. Right now it looks like a weekend of about $12 million, but I want to keep an eye on how this plays out and see if we see any different arc over the weekend because of the Friday opening.
F1: The Movie - Now that we’re looking at a more apple to apples comparison (no PLF’s last week or this week), the holding power here is showing up. Not a surprise that this is holding up nicely, but that’s consistent with the 24 films I posted last weekend from Jerry Bruckheimer (that grossed over $100 million), the average multiple off opening weekend for that list was 5.47. Looks like it’s down a little less than 30% for a weekend around 9.
Eddington - The grosses on this latest film from Art House God Ari Aster are very…..Ari Aster. The grosses are pretty good, especially in theaters that are close to a Film School, and the New York Film Academy. Looks like a weekend of about $4 million - $5 million.
- not that I would ever recycle ideas here, oh no, never. Total hoax.