The Boxoffice Podium
Forecasting the Top 3 Movies at the Domestic Box Office | July 19 – 21, 2024
Week 29 | July 19 – 24, 2024
Top 10 3-Day Range | Weekend 29, 2024: $120M — $150M
1. Twisters
Universal | NEW
Weekend Range: $60 – $75M
The Boxoffice Company’s Showtimes Dashboard Marketshare: 27%
Pros
In May of 1996, moviegoers were enticingly promised a thrill ride of a summer blockbuster, “From the creators of Jurassic Park and the director of Speed.” That movie was Twister, a film focused on tornado chasers in Oklahoma. It was cooked up as a spec script co-written by novelist Michael Crichton and shepherded to the screen by the Amblin team of Steven Spielberg and Kathleen Kennedy. The film was a massive worldwide success, opening at #1 domestically with $41M and then holding firm throughout May with $37M, $37.9M (+2%), and $17.1M in the three following weeks despite competition from Mission: Impossible and Dragonheart. It ended its run as the second-highest-grossing movie of the year behind Independence Day, taking in $241.6M domestic and nearly $500M worldwide.
That’s the kind of performance any studio would envy today unadjusted, which is why it seems almost beyond comprehension that it took this long to get the sequel to screens. Twisters -which has elements of a legacy sequel, remake, and reboot all in one- finds Spielberg returning to executive produce alongside longtime producer Frank Marshall. In place of original director Jan de Bont is Oscar-nominated filmmaker Lee Isaac Chung, who made a mark with his 2020 Best Picture-nominee Minari. That autobiographical drama’s middle American farm locale makes him ideal for the Oklahoma-set Twisters, while his experience directing for Lucasfilm’s Mandalorian series gives him the VFX bonafides you need for a big budget spectacle like this.
Our Forecasting Panel gives this new entry a clear runway for a #1 finish. Given that there’s been a drought of broad-audience thrills this summer due to trifecta animation domination (Garfield, Inside Out, Despicable Me) and R-rated franchise movies (Furiosa, Bad Boys), Twisters is exactly the kind of old school PG-13 blockbuster audiences are hungry for right now. Don’t be surprised if PLFs massively over-index for this title, especially in immersive seating technologies. Twisters has all the hallmarks of a crowd pleaser from what we’ve seen.
Cons
Late sequels are always hard to forecast, especially when the signature cast is unable to return (in this case, Helen Hunt bowed out, and Bill Paxton passed away in 2017), and “late” means “28 years late.” Ideally, Twisters will play to nostalgia the way the first Jurassic World did ($652.3M domestic). Also produced by Spielberg and Marshall, that first JW title opened 14 years after the poorly-received Jurassic Park III and featured an all-new cast with no legacy players. Twisters is ideally suited to this approach since audiences are likely coming for thrills and destruction; the Twister franchise is more about the concept of tornado chasing rather than specific character arcs. In a less-than-ideal world, it will play more like Independence Day: Resurgence, which buckled in the absence of Will Smith and bombed stateside ($103.1M).
There’s also the question mark of the cast, headed by Daisy Edgar-Jones of the 2022 hit drama Where the Crawdads Sing and Glen Powell, who popped in Tom Gun: Maverick and then became a heartthrob starring in last year’s sleeper rom-com Anyone but You. While Powell doesn’t quite have the same momentum Chris Pratt did in Jurassic World coming off of the first Guardians of the Galaxy, that’s the hope of the filmmakers who want to launch him as a viable leading man with Twisters. In 1996, neither Helen Hunt nor Bill Paxton were considered stars in the traditional sense, even though both had been visible for many years in films like Aliens and Apollo 13 (Paxton) and hit shows like Mad About You (Hunt). She would go on to win an Oscar for As Good as It Gets, and he would headline other big movies like Mighty Joe Young and U-571. So there’s certainly a precedent to use the Twister franchise as a launching pad for stars, but it’s not a guarantee… especially if we find out this series is way past its sell-by date.
Finally, we’re only one weekend away from Marvel Studios’ Deadpool & Wolverine, which is set to jab its katanas and claws into the box office in a very big way. That means Twisters likely won’t have the same hold/legs its predecessor did, making this opening weekend of the utmost importance for its theatrical run.
2. Despicable Me 4
Universal/Illumination | Week 3
Weekend Range: $25 – $30M
The Boxoffice Company’s Showtimes Dashboard Marketshare: 16%
Pros
Despite poor reviews, Illumination’s Despicable Me 4 performed far above expectations to maintain #1 in its second frame with $44.65M domestic while also pushing the franchise as a whole over the $5 billion mark (the only animated series to do so) at $5.087B. Even though it had one of the franchise’s lowest debuts, its second weekend hold of 40% is the strongest of any of the six movies. With no major holidays to throw a monkey wrench into things and Inside Out 2 starting to fade, the new Despicable Me is without question the #1 counter-programming to Twisters in this frame.
Cons
Twisters is an intense experience even for a PG-13 film, but that’s not necessarily a deterrent for older children 8 and up who want a fun summer ride at the multiplex. That means those tornadoes could be funneling some of Gru and his Minions’ cash flow this weekend. It’s not the same sharp disparity of demos as something like The Garfield Movie and Bad Boys: Ride or Die. If we see a sharper drop than expected here, Twisters competition is likely the culprit.
3. Inside Out 2
Disney/Pixar | Week 6
Weekend Range: $12 – $14M
The Boxoffice Company’s Showtimes Dashboard Marketshare: 11%
Pros
What is left to say at this point about one of the strongest earners in recent memory? Since it’s the #1 Pixar film globally and #2 domestically, that means there’s very few moviegoers on Earth who haven’t experienced what’s inside Riley’s brain at this point. Still, this sequel continues to hold strong, with the last frame down only 34%, meaning repeat business is holding down the fort on this one. The film also added 55 theaters last weekend, which is rare to see in the 5th week. Going into the 6th we expect that hold to remain strong even as Disney’s marketing machine is gearing more towards Marvel now.
Cons
The biggest wildcard element is last frame’s #2 film, Longlegs, which came out nowhere from boutique distributor Neon to become the biggest horror opening of the year and the biggest indie horror opening of the decade at $22.6M. While word-of-mouth coming out of the weekend was mixed (“C+” CinemaScore/66% RT audience score), the “want-to-see” factor from all the ink the film got could push either Despicable Me 4 or Inside Out 2 out of the Top 3. How much more cash Neon decides to infuse into their campaign going into week 2 will likely be the deciding factor there.
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