Box Office Discussion: Out of Its "League"

 Despite high expectations, DC League of Super-Pets stumbles out of the gate.

A few weeks after it looked that animation had finally broken out of its extended funk with the huge opening of Minions: The Rise of Gru, it now seems clear that whatever appeal that film had didn't extend to its fellow animated titles.  Lightyear is the biggest flop of the summer, and Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank barely made a ripple.  Now, after expectations that it could open as high as $60 million, the latest animated title, DC League of Super-Pets, is looking like a dog.

Despite an appealing, kid-friendly premise and another pairing of its two leads Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart, Super-Pets could only dig up $23 million over the weekend.  Not only is that far below what Minions made over 4th of July weekend, but it's less than half of what Lightyear opened to last month.  Indeed, it's a bit below what The Bad Guys, which didn't have the built-in audience that Super-Pets presumably has, opened to in April.  Still, with no other family films scheduled to go wide until Lyle Lyle Crocodile arrives in early October, there's plenty of room for Super-Pets to run.  Other than the little-noticed Christian comedy Family Camp, The Bad Guys had the family market all to itself for two months, and it ended up doing 4 times its opening.  Super-Pets getting to, or at least near, $100 million will remove a lot of the sting.

Falling 58%, a number probably bigger than Universal would like, last week's champ, Nope, hovered into second with $18.6 million.  Like with a lot of horror movies, word of mouth is somewhat mixed,  but Jordan Peele's sci-fi thriller should still be reasonably profitable.  The film's 10-day total is $80.6 million, and it should be the first R-rated film over $100 million in 2 1/2 years within a week or two.

In third, Thor: Love and Thunder passed $300 million with a $13.2 million weekend.  The action comedy now stands at $301.6 million and should become the highest-grossing Thor-centered film in the next couple of weeks.

Also looking to pass its predecessor in the next couple of weeks is the aforementioned Minions: The Rise of Gru.  The animated comedy took in $11 million for a total of $320.5 million.  Like Super-Pets, Minions is likely to take advantage of the family film wasteland, and could put up some surprisingly solid holds for the next few weeks.

After 9 straight weekends of grossing over $10 million, the year's biggest smash, Top Gun: Maverick, finally fell to a 7-figure gross as it took in $8.4 million.  The film has now flown to $650.3 million, and should pass Jurassic World and Titanic for 7th on the all-time domestic list soon.  It still remains to be seen if there's enough to get to $700 million, but I certainly wouldn't be shocked if it makes it.

Where the Crawdads Sing continues to be a small-scale success, turning in $7.6 million to bring its total to $53.6 million.  Elvis is still, for now, the summer's biggest non-franchise cog, as it grosses $5.7 million for $128.9 million.  

The Black Phone creeps past Scream to become both the year's biggest horror movie and year's biggest R-rated title (though both titles will be taken by Nope by this weekend) with a $2.5 million haul to bring its total to $83.1 million.  Jurassic World: Dominion continues to hang around. taking in $2.2 million for a total of $369.6 million.

Opening in tenth is Vengeance.  The comedy-mystery, written, directed, and starring B.J. Novak, was able to muster up $1.8 million.  Unless the film ends up being super-leggy, expect a final gross of under $5 million.

Two new films open wide this weekend.  Thanks to the star power of Brad Pitt, Bullet Train looks to chug to #1 this weekend.  The action comedy, which also stars Joey King, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Brian Tyree Henry, Michael Shannon, and Sandra Bullock (apparently returning the favor after Pitt had an extended cameo in The Lost City) sees Pitt as an assassin whose simple job to retrieve a briefcase on the titular train turns out to be a complicated mess.  Expectations are surprisingly low, with some predicting only a $30 million start, which admittedly would be compatible with the start of The Lost City.  Hoping to serve as counterprogramming is the comedy Easter Sunday, starring popular comedian Jo Koy in his first leading role.  The autobiographical film is the first Hollywood production with an all-Filipino cast, which might help it to overcome its weird release date (seriously, why release a movie called Easter Sunday in August?).  Could Bullet Train surprise and open closer to $50 million?  We'll find out next week.