Both A Quiet Place Part II and Cruella got the belated summer movie season off to a roaring start.
Ever since major studios resumed releasing movies to theaters late last summer, it's felt like every step forward was followed immediately by 3/4ths of a step back. And after two May releases in Wrath of Man and Spiral that were hoped to be a bigger than they turned out to be, everyone was understandably nervous about the two big movies anchoring Memorial Day. If they underperformed, it was not out of the question that many of the movies scheduled later might flee to fall, or to next year, or straight to streaming.
Those worries proved to be unfounded. A Quiet Place Part II came out with a bang, opening to $47.6 million from Friday through Sunday, and $57.1 million through Monday. Those numbers are very close to what the original film opened to back in April 2018. It's by no means a perfect comparison, of course, but it is by far both the biggest three-day and biggest four-day grosses of the pandemic era, and the film looks to be a certain $100 million grosser, something that we still haven't had since Sonic the Hedgehog.
Opening in second was Disney's Cruella, which, like 2014's Maleficent, was a live-action, more sympathetic take on an iconic Disney animated villain, starring an Oscar winner. It took in $21.5 million through Sunday and $26.5 million though Monday, a strong opening, especially in the wake of Quiet Place. As family films have proven to have strong legs throughout the pandemic, this one might be able to stick around for a while.
Not surprisingly, those two films between them were responsible for nearly 90% of movie tickets sold last weekend, leaving scraps for everything else. In third was one of those aforementioned family films with strong legs, Raya and the Last Dragon, which actually jumped 40% from last weekend's gross to take in $2.3 million through Sunday and $2.8 million through Monday, for a total as of Memorial Day of $51.7 million. Spiral, which had spent the last two weeks topping the chart, tumbled all the way to 4th, with $2.2 million through Sunday and $2.7 million through Monday, for a total of $20.2 million. Wrath of Man was the only other movie that made over a million through Sunday, taking in $2.2 million and $2.7 million, which actually put its four-day gross ahead of Sprial's. It's up to $22.7 million.
Making over $1 million over four days was Demon Slayer the Movie: Mugen Train and Godzilla vs. Kong, which are now up to $46.7 million and $98.4 million, respectively. It will be interesting to see if Quiet Place can get past $100 million before Kong does, despite the latter's 8-week head start.
Rounding out the Top 10 was Those Who Wish Me Dead, whose box office absolutely collapsed, Dream Horse, and the Vietnamese family drama Bố Già, which might just be the first film from that country to ever make the North American Top 10, an even more impressive feat considering it is only playing at 20 theaters nationwide. Total grosses through Monday are $6.9 for Dead and $1.7 million for Horse. Bố Già didn't report Monday grosses, but it made $0.4 million through Sunday.
Two new movies go wide this weekend. The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It is the third entry in the main Conjuring series and 8th in the extended Conjuring Universe. The franchise seemed to be running out of steam with both The Curse of La Llorona and Annabelle Comes Home underperforming in 2019, but we'll see if the two year break between movies helped heal some of that fatigue. It should challenge Quiet Place for #1. Meanwhile, Spirit Untamed is a theatrical adaption of the Netflix show Spirit Riding Free, itself based on the largely forgotten 2002 animated feature Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron. This one seems destined for fourth, outdoing whatever Raya does this weekend but falling well short of Cruella. Will Conjuring manage to conjure up the #1 slot? Will Spirit surprise with a muscular opening? Or will Quiet prevail again? We'll find out next week.
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