Animation continue to the be hero of the summer office thanks to Despicable Me 4 and Inside Out 2 , but Neon’s Longlegs can rightly take a bow after scoring the biggest opening for an independent horror pic in a decade with $22.6 million in ticket sales.
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From Illumination and Universal, DM4 easily stayed atop the domestic box office chart in its second weekend with $44.7 million from 4,449 theaters as it jumped the $200 million mark to finish Sunday with a North American tally of $211.1 million. Overseas, Gru and the mischievous Minions also continued to stir up strong sales, earning $88 million from 78 markets for a foreign tally of $226.7 million and $437.8 million globally.
In a notable milestone, the Despicable Me/Minions franchise has crossed $5 billion mark in global ticket sales, a feat no animated franchise has achieved before. (Earlier this week, Illumination announced that a Minions 3 is in the works.)
The big surprise of the weekend is the better-than-expected performance of writer-director Osgood Perkins Longlegs , a serial killer chiller starring Maika Monroe and Nicolas Cage. The tense FBI procedural, playing in 2,510 cinemas, is the biggest opening ever for Tom Quinn’s Oscar-winning specialty production and distribution outfit Neon, home of Parasite .
Among other records, it’s Cage’s biggest opening since National Treasure: Book of Secrets almost twenty years ago in 2007. It’s also the top R-rated opening of 2024 to date. And it is the only indie horror film of the past decade to open to $20 million or more (this excludes one of the Insidious movies from Focus Features/Universal).
Going back as far as 25 years, Neon also notes that very few indie films have crossed the $20 million threshold in their debut. For purposes of context, however, many indie titles — including Neon releases — only open a few theaters, versus rolling out nationwide from the get-go as Longlegs did.
The well-reviewed movie earned $10 million on Friday alone, including previews, and wasn’t hampered by a C+ Cinemascore, since it’s common for the horror genre to land a grade in the C range. Fun fact: More than 70 percent of ticket buyers were between ages 18 and 34.
The record-shattering Inside Out 2 — which has a shot at becoming the top-grossing animated film of all time — finished Sunday with a global cume of $1.35 billion. It’s already become the top-grossing Pixar title of all time and the third biggest animated title, not adjusted for inflation. The film has helped propel Disney become the first major studio to cross the $2 billion mark in 2024 global ticket sales.
In North America, Inside Out 2 came in third in its fifth weekend with $20.8 million for a domestic tally of $572.6 million. Overseas, it earned another $50.2 million from 47 markets for a foreign cume of $777.5 million. It has yet to open in Japan, where it could do sizeable business.
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Paramount’s holdover A Quiet Place: Day One continues to entice moviegoers and placed fourth despite the entry of Longlegs . The prequel scared up another $11.8 million this weekend from 3,378 theaters for a domestic total of $116.2 million through Sunday.
Apple Original Films’ continues its theatrical ambitions with the release of director Greg Berlanti’s Fly Me to the Moon , a romantic comedy starring Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum. The period space-age movie, distributed by Sony on behalf of Apple, opened to a subdued $10 million from 3,356 sites to place No. 5. The number isn’t a surprise considering the film was fueled by older adults; more than half of ticket buyers were 45 or older, including 32 percent over the age of 55.
The movie has earned meh reviews , but audiences were kinder in bestowing the older-skewing film an A- CinemaScore. Reviews matter more to older moviegoers, upon whom Berlanti’s film is relying, but Apple and Sony believe the film will have long legs, similar to Ticket to Paradise , which opened to $16.5 million domestically on its way to topping out at $68 million, and Where the Crawdads Sing , which opened to $17.7 million and topped out at $90 million domestic.
At the specialty box office, new offerings include A24’s Sing Sing , which is on course to score a solid per-theater average of $34,280 or thereabouts from four theaters in Los Angeles and New York. The film, from director Greg Kwedar, chronicles an arts program at the infamous Sing Sing prison.
July 14, 7:45 a.m. Updated with revised estimates.
This story was originally published July 13 at 10:16 a.m.
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