Weekend Box Office: Deadpool & Wolverine Is Back on Top

Alien: Romulus could have been called Alien: Dropship this week as it took the plunge right out of the #1 slot and relinquished it back to Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman. The dog days of summer came for the new releases this week, as expected. But thanks to the various returning champions still spread throughout the top 10, if the estimates don’t veer too wildly, 2024 just had the 10th-best pre-Labor Day weekend of all time and the best since 2018.

**King of the Crop: Deadpool & Wolverine Reclaims #1 Spot**

Deadpool & Wolverine is the first film to return to the top of the box office after being dethroned since Wonka over New Year’s Eve weekend in 2023. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse also did it on its fourth weekend last June. Those two movies combined grossed $599.7 million domestically. After another $18.3 million in its fifth weekend, the Shawn Levy-directed Marvel team-up eulogy for Fox is up to $577 million. That weekend total is the 18th-best fifth weekend in history. Last weekend, D&W was ahead of the Disney/Pixar sequel by about $11 million. This week, it is less than six, but did gain a little back over the weekend. Inside Out 2 ended its sixth weekend at $596 million after a $12.8 million haul. If the gap does not close more significantly, D&W could have a shot at the 2024 crown, but it needs to play through September. After this weekend, Inside Out 2 is at $646 million and on the verge of passing Jurassic World for the ninth highest-grossing first-run release of all time. The dinosaurs are now looking over their shoulder for Deadpool & Wolverine as well, while worldwide, it has passed $1.21 billion.

**Rotten Returns: The Crow fails to take off**

Lions Gate is having a historically bad month. They took Eli Roth’s Borderlands off the shelf and it has cemented itself as one of the biggest bombs of the year. Then, a marketing team attributed negative quotes to some of Francis Ford Coppola’s most acclaimed films in the trailer for their upcoming release of Megalopolis — quotes that turned out to be fake. And now comes their attempt to bring The Crow back into theaters 30 years after the infamous film adaptation where an on-set accident took the life of star Brandon Lee. This weekend is not going well either.

There are 23 films this year to date with production budgets higher than what Rupert Sanders’ new version of The Crow cost. Three of them opened to less than $10 million — Borderlands ($8.6 million / $24 million to date worldwide / $120 million budget), The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare ($8.9 million / $27.2 million worldwide / $60 million budget), and Fly Me to the Moon ($9.4 million / $41.2 million to date worldwide / $100 million budget). The first two were released by Lions Gate. Now, Sanders went from a $170 million budget (Snow White and the Huntsman) to a $110 million one (2017’s Ghost in the Shell) to $50 million for The Crow and it opened to just $4.6 million. The good news is that it will be the smallest loser of Sanders’ career and not as bad a loser as the studio’s other two big failures this year. The bad is that this is another failed franchise for them.

**The Top 10 and Beyond: Alien: Romulus Reaches $225 Million Worldwide**

Over to last week’s winner we go as Alien: Romulus fell 61.5% down to $16.2 million in its second weekend. Not exactly ideal but not far from Prometheus’s 59% fall from a higher $51 million opening and certainly better than Covenant’s 70% collapse down to just $10.6 million from a smaller $36 million start. This one, for the time being, is around the fall of Nutty Professor II: The Klumps, which fell 57% down to $18.1 million after a $42.5 million opening. Romulus did not do quite as well during the week as its $74.5 million ten-day total is a few million behind The Klumps. But this is nothing to despair for the time being. Unless it takes some serious dips going forward, it is still looking at somewhere between $110-120 million domestic. Fede Alvarez’s film is already in the win column as the $80 million production stands at $225 million worldwide.

A film already well into the win column (albeit maybe not in production stories) is It Ends With Us. The Justin Baldoni-directed film with Blake Lively continues to cruise with $11.9 million in its third weekend and a total of $120.8 million — that is the 10th-best 17-day total ever for a film opening in August. Conservatively, It Ends With Us is headed somewhere around $150 million domestic. Worldwide, the $25 million production is over $242 million.

Two of the three new releases hit the top five this weekend and the top ticket taker was Zoe Kravitz’s directorial debut, Blink Twice, with Naomi Ackie and Channing Tatum. The thriller opened to $7.3 million, which is in the vicinity of late August horror releases like Ready or Not ($8 million), Mimic ($7.8 million), You’re Next ($7.02 million), The Invitation ($6.8 million), and The Cave ($6.1 million). Ready or Not had a Wednesday head start and finished its run with $28.7 million. The Invitation and Mimic got between $25-26 million, while the other two finished between $15-19 million. Not great numbers for even a modest budget of $20 million. Though as the best-reviewed new wide release of the week (79%), perhaps the Amazon/MGM release will find its audience later. It made another $6.7 million internationally.

Not far behind is this week’s faith-based offering, The Forge, from Alex Kendrick. He has found success in the past around this time with openings for War Room ($11.3 million), Courageous ($9.1 million), Overcomer ($8.1 million), and Fireproof ($6.8 million). The Forge fell below all of those with a $6.6 million start. Those latter three films all stretched their grosses to between $33-36 million, while War Room grossed $67.7 million. We’ll see if The Forge can discover that audience again and even beat the special showings of Henry Selick’s Coraline, which grossed another $5 million to bring its 15^th Anniversary run to $24.1 million in 11 days. Despicable Me 4 also grossed another $4.6 million this weekend to bring its total to just shy of $350 million. Worldwide, it has grossed over $885 million. Inside Out 2, meanwhile, became the 12^th film in history to cross $1 billion outside of North America and the first fully animated film to achieve that.

Twisters, the big hit in North America that evidently wasn’t anywhere else, is now about to cross $250 million here after a $6.2 million in its sixth weekend. It has now surpassed the gross of the original 1996 film ($241.8 million) but is still a far cry away from it — beyond inflation. Twenty-eight years ago, it came just shy of $500 million worldwide. That was all-timer status back then, hobnobbing with other successes of the ‘90s up to that point, including Jurassic Park, The Lion King, Independence Day (that same summer), Forrest Gump, Terminator 2, Aladdin, and Ghost. Twisters, thanks to an international haul of just $98.7 million, is still hoping for an invite to the party of Bad Boys: Ride or Die, which crossed $400 million last week. This sixth weekend is not that far behind Inception ($7.83 million), and Twisters is about $13-14 million behind its pace, so $275 million is still very much in play, maybe even $375 million worldwide. But it now appears likely it is going to come up short of making a theatrical profit, which is astounding.

Finally, two films with moderate releases this weekend included the horror film Strange Darling from Magenta Light Studios, which has been embraced by critics to the tune of a 96% rating. The serial killer thriller, with Willa Fitzgerald and Kyle Gallner, grossed $1.14 million in 1,135 theaters. Sony Classics’ Sundance pickup, Between the Temples, with Jason Schwartzman and Carol Kane, also well-liked at 87%, opened in 576 locations and grossed $677,000. Consider that both of these films came within just $4 million of besting The Crow.

On the Vine: Audiences Get Another AI Horror Flick

Labor Day weekend is not exactly bringing out the heavy hitters unless you count Ronald Reagan. Yes, the star of Bedtime for Bonzo will be portrayed by Dennis Quaid in Reagan, directed by Sean “Soul Surfer” McNamara. Also opening will be the oft-delayed sci-fi horror film AfrAId with John Cho and Katherine Waterston.