Despicable Me 2 now owns the third largest three-day animated debut in history with $82.5 million, which is impressive considering the $60 million it took in over the course of its first two days. Its $142 million five-day total is the largest five-day opening for an animated feature ever and given its “A” CinemaScore I don’t expect it to stop this roll any time soon.
I’m sure Universal execs are jumping for joy, not only because of the amount of money they made, but because of the amount of money spent making the film. In its first five days Despicable Me 2 nearly doubled its $76 million budget domestically and its worldwide total is just shy of $300 million. Impressive!
Over at Disney the shouting is probably more in frustration than in celebration as The Lone Ranger was a massive disappointment. Budgeted anywhere from $215-250 million depending on who you believe, the picture got out of the gates on Wednesday with $9.6 million and things never improved from there.
Starring Johnny Depp and Armie Hammer, The Lone Ranger managed just $29.3 million over the three-day and only $48.9 million over the Wednesday-Sunday frame. The “B+” CinemaScore isn’t too bad, but the nails have already been driven into this coffin domestically.
Now Disney has to hope Depp can carry a Western overseas where the genre isn’t exactly known to do that well outside of a couple recent exceptions such as True Grit and Django Unchained. Does Depp have the same cache, however, as the Coen brothers and Quentin Tarantino? His Pirates films suggest he just might. As of right now, from 24 markets, the overseas total is $24.5 million. We’ll see where it goes from there as plenty of big territories have yet to receive it.0
The week’s other new wide release in the top ten is Kevin Hart‘s concert picture, Let Me Explain, which amassed $17.5 million in five days from only 876 theaters. The “A” CinemaScore not only bodes well for the film’s future prospects, but Hart’s future overall as the guy is becoming a bona fide star if it wasn’t already.
Last week the Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy comedy The Heat was the highest grossing newcomer and it held strong in its second weekend, dipping only 36% and scoring $25 million, bringing the domestic cume to $86 million, doubling its reported $43 million budget.
In other news, Steve Carell finds himself doing quite well all over the board. Not only did he land the #1 position with his voice work in Despicable Me 2, but he has a supporting role in Fox Searchlight’s limited release The Way, Way Back. Opening in only 19 theaters this weekend, the film took in $575,000 for a $30,263 per theater average. The film is great (read my review here) and one I recommend you seek out.
The Way, Way Back expands into 13 additional markets next weekend and will go wide on July 26 in approximately 650-750 theatres.
Next weekend Despicable Me 2 will attempt to defend its #1 crown against two new wide releases in Guillermo del Toro‘s Pacific Rim and the Adam Sandler & Co. sequel Grown Ups 2. Anyone bold enough to throw out some early numbers? Does Despicable repeat?
Finally, as we mentioned on Thursday, when it comes to the RopeofSilicon Box Office Challenge, I am creating a second leaderboard that will track overall prediction accuracy. I am planning on premiering it in about two to three weeks and there will be a minimum prediction requirement of five weeks. This way we can track not only the point totals as detailed below, but your overall prediction accuracy. It’s going to be a lot of fun once both leaderboards are live!
The complete top ten is listed below, followed by the Box Office Challenge prediction results. Right now they are merely results based on the estimates, but I will be back on Monday afternoon with the winners once actuals are announced.
