MINIONS (Illumination/Universal) was expected to enfold the weekend box office in its little yellow fingers, and so it is. Preliminary numbers at Deadline give it a $45M opening day, which appears to be the largest opening in the history of movie animation (the asterisk is because we now consider “Friday” to include Thursday night, which contributed $6.2M to the Minions cause). The weekend should hit $115M, which would beat Toy Story 3‘s $110.3M for the 2d biggest animation weekend ever, and it could even challenge the champ, Shrek the Third‘s $121.6M. Minions will blow past the Despicable Me opening weekends (although Despicable 2 isn’t really comparable, since it opened on a Wednesday). Overseas, Minions already had $200M by Friday, and that number will get much bigger by Sunday. Incredibly, Universal may have its 3rd $1B worldwide box office take of the year, after Furious 7 and Jurassic World.
It’s a giant understatement to say that the weekend’s other openings won’t be close to the leader. THE GALLOWS (Blumhouse/Warners) had a $4M Friday and may get to $10M for the weekend, about the same as The Lazarus Effect (also from Blumhouse), which parlayed a $3.8M opening day into a $10.3M weekend and $25.8M US total. The difference is that Gallows carried a much more expensive Warners marketing campaign than the one Relativity gave Lazarus, so even with the bargain basement production budget, Gallows may not hit profit. It is, however, going to be far closer than SELF/LESS (Gramercy/Focus/Universal), which is yet another DOA release for Ryan Reynolds, with a $2M Friday that might get to $5M for the weekend, not even enough to pay for last week’s TV ads.
JURASSIC WORLD (Legendary/Universal) and INSIDE OUT (Pixar/Disney) are once again neck-and-neck. Currently, both are at about $4.5M for Friday, and will be at about $16M for the weekend, although Inside Out may fall behind due to the direct competition from Minions.
TERMINATOR: GENISYS (Skydance/Paramount) didn’t benefit from an absence of new action movies this weekend, down 66% from last Friday (which wasn’t even its opening day) to around $3.5M, and looking at a $12.5M weekend. It’s unlikely to reach $100M in the US, which puts all the pressure on international to pay the bills MAGIC MIKE XXL (Warners) is an oddity, because it was so frontloaded that it had already plunged by last Friday, its 3rd day of release, but then it had by far the biggest Sunday bump of any post-July 4th movie last weekend. So comparisons are a bit dicey, but on a Friday-to-Friday basis it was down less than 50% to $3.3M, and it could get to $10M for the weekend, which would put it on track for a $65M US total. While not in a league with the first Mike‘s $113.7M, given its low production cost, that might be enough (assuming a reasonable amount of overseas success) for XXL to reach profit.
TED 2 (MRC/Universal), the one blight on Universal’s summer, continued to plummet, down 65% from last Friday and heading for a $5M weekend. MAX (MGM/Warners) was dented by the arrival of Minions, and it fell over 60% from last Friday, on its way to a $3M weekend.
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