NOTE: This Post Has Been Updated With Actual Studio Estimates
Typically Independence Day itself is a relatively quiet day for moviegoing, because audiences have other things to do, and DESPICABLE ME 2 (Universal) fell 29% from Wednesday to a still-big $24.5M. That was the 7th-highest Thursday box office ever (and the 2d-highest for movies not opening on that day, behind Transformers 2). Business should go up fairly sharply on Friday and again by a smaller amount on Saturday before dropping on Sunday, and Despicable 2 could get to around $90M over the 3-day weekend (the record for 4th of July weekend is $97.9M for Transformers 3) and over $150M for the movie’s 5 1/2-day opening. MONSTERS UNIVERSITY (Disney/Pixar) was also down on the holiday, although by a much slimmer 3% to $5.2M
The surprise is that this year, at least, action movies were exempt from the Independence Day slump. THE LONE RANGER (Disney) actually edged up by 2% to $9.9M, although it’s still unlikely to get much beyond $50-55M for the 5+ day opening, and with its giant costs, it’s nowhere near even being able to dream about approaching breakeven.
Holdover action movies did even better, as WORLD WAR Z (Paramonunt) rose from $3.9M to $4.3M, WHITE HOUSE DOWN (Sony) from $2.6M to $3.5M, and MAN OF STEEL (Warners) from $2.3M to $3M. The comedy-actioner THE HEAT (20th) also had a healthy increase from $5.2M to $6.4M.
Not so surprisingly, the Kevin Hart concert movie LET ME EXPLAIN (Lionsgate) was very front-loaded, plunging 46% from $4.7M on Wednesday to $2.6M on Thursday. Still, the film had bare-minimum production and marketing costs, and should prove nicely profitable.
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