Diana Prince launched her long overdue live-action motion picture to some box office figures as mighty as its lead hero! With $100.5 million garnered in just three days, Wonder Woman is a major hit, achieving the fourth biggest opening weekend ever (behind only Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 2, Suicide Squad and Deadpool) for a superhero movie that doesn’t star Iron Man, Spider-Man, Superman or Batman as well as the second biggest opening weekend ever (behind only Finding Dory) for a female-led movie that doesn’t belong to the Twilight, Hunger Games or Star Wars franchises. Plus, it’s already the biggest opening weekend ever for Chris Pine, the biggest opening weekend ever for a female-directed film and the sixth biggest June opening weekend in history.
While I still maintain that the Wonder Woman marketing was weirdly muted, it’s no shocker that the movie made oodles of cash given the ubiquity of Wonder Woman as a hugely popular superhero. The lack of successful blockbusters in May that weren’t Guardians of The Galaxy Vol. 2 may have also contributed to an appetite for a big crowd-pleaser blockbuster and super duper strong reviews didn’t hurt. Considering how well this one held throughout the weekend, it’s unlikely this one will be as frontloaded as past DC Extended Universe titles like Man of Steel and Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice. I’m thinking this one at least does $275 million domestically, a strong finish for Diana Prince and co.
Wonder Woman wasn’t the only superhero movie debuting this weekend. Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie also bowed this weekend to a decent but not great $23.8 million. That’s slightly above the bows of past more expensive DreamWorks Animation films like Turbo and Rise Of The Guardians (though both of those burned off demand with Wednesday bows) and with only a $38 million budget, this is one of the cheaper major American animated movies in a while. Still, with a hugely popular source material by its side and no other big animated family movies in the marketplace, it feels like this one should have at least cracked $30 million in its opening weekend. With Cars 3 and Despicable Me 3 on the way in the next few weeks, Captain Underpants will likely not stick around for long at the box office and will probably top out at $70 million.
In third place this weekend was last weekend’s reigning box office champ, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales. Jack Sparrow’s newest adventure grossed only $21.6 million this frame, losing 66% from last weekend and bringing its 10-day cume to only $114.6 million, which is about on par with the third Pirates of The Caribbean’s entire opening weekend! Meanwhile, fellow Disney May 2017 blockbuster Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 2 grossed another $9.7 million, a 53% drop from last weekend, for a current domestic total of $355.4 million. Failing to rebound after its underwhelming opening was Baywatch, which grossed another $8.5 million, a 54% drop from last weekend that gives the R-rated comedy an underwhelming 11-day total of $41.7 million. Alien: Covenant had another 60+% weekend-to-weekend plummet this frame, going down 62% to gross another $4 million for a current domestic total of only $67.2 million.
Everything, Everything is quietly becoming a solid sleeper hit, grossing another $3.3 million, a 45% drop from last weekend that brings the $10 million budgeted romantic drama to a $28.3 million total. Continuing to fall hard was Snatched, which plummeted 66% to gross another $1.3 million for a domestic total of only $43.8 million. Also falling hard this weekend was Diary Of A Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul, which plummeted 73% to gross only $1.2 million in its third weekend for a domestic total of only $17,8 million. Looks like this one’s entire domestic cume won’t be able to match the opening weekends of the first two Wimpy Kid movies. Rounding out the top ten was King Arthur: Legend Of The Sword, which went down 64% to gross only $1.1 million this weekend for a $37.1 million domestic total.
Newbie comedy 3 Idiotas (a remake of 2009 Indian comedy sensation 3 Idiots) got off to a poor start this weekend, grossing $600,000 from 349 locations, a much poorer start than usual for Pantelion fare which usually can be counted on to have a strong per-theater average at least. Expect this one to vanish from theaters in a quick fashion.
Paris Can Wait looks like it might end up being a minor arthouse sleeper hit as it grossed $550,979 from 151 theaters this weekend for a per-theater average of $3,649 and a current domestic total of $1.6 million. It’ll be interesting to see how this one performs as it expands in the weeks ahead. Churchill, meanwhile, bowed to a middling $426,616 at 215 theaters for a per-theater average of only $1,984. Newcomer Dean managed an anemic debut, grossing only $60,366 at 15 locations for a per-theater average of only $4,024. Band-Aid fared a bit better with $31,500 at 3 locations for a per-theater average of $10,500. Interestingly, The Exception had the biggest per-theater average of all the new limited releases grossing $11,669 at 2 theaters for an opening weekend of $23,337, a much better than usual bow for A24/DirectTV Cinema collaborations which typically get hurt financially since they simultaneously debut on DirectTV services (among such efforts, I think only Remember had a better per-theater average).
The top 12 movies this weekend grossed a total of $176.1 million, the second biggest twenty-second weekend of any given year and way ahead of typical first weekends of June.