Deadpool & Wolverine rules the box office again while It Ends with Us has outstanding debut

We have lots to talk about with the weekend's new releases, including one of the biggest unsurprising sleeper hits of 2024. But first, let's discuss the reigning champion of the domestic box office. Deadpool & Wolverine clung to the number one spot once more this frame with a mighty $54.1 million gross. That's the 12th biggest third weekend in history and this frame’s haul alone was bigger than the opening domestic weekends of many past X-Men movies like The Wolverine. The latest movie from the Big Fat Liar director now has a mighty $494.3 million 17-day North American total. Deadpool & Wolverine will surpass the $500 million domestic mark sometime tomorrow on its 19th day of release, making it the eighth-fasted film to reach that mark.

Movies based on recent best-selling books have been a go-to recipe for making money in Hollywood for nearly a century now. As late as 2014, titles like Gone Girl, The Fault in Our Stars, and The Maze Runner wrung strong ticket sales out of pre-existing famous books. Don't forget about fellow early 2010s hit adaptations like The Help, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and Life of Pi. Then, Hollywood shifted all its chips into costly all-ages tentpoles. Studios craved the next Avengers or Avatar, not the next Fifty Shades of Grey. By the end of the 2010s, non-action films based on famous modern books had largely vanished save for 2018's Crazy Rich Asians.

Where the Crawdads Sing and A Man Called Otto already seemed to signal this subgenre was making a comeback in the 2020s. Now, it feels inevitable Hollywood will flood theaters again with these modern book adaptations like it’s 1999 again. What happened? Well, all it takes is one hit movie to change things. This weekend, that one hit movie was the dynamite overperformer It Ends with Us.

This Blake Lively star vehicle opened to $50 million, a better debut than The Fault in Our Stars ten years ago. Per The-Numbers, that's the best opening weekend in history for a non-Twilight romantic drama. It’s also blown the domestic bows of every other Blake Lively star vehicle out of the water. It's also the 11th-biggest opening weekend of 2024, ahead of much costlier 2024 titles like Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire and The Fall Guy. There’s no end to the box office records this one set this weekend.

Combining the popular source material of It Ends with Us with Blake Lively turned out to be a winning proposition for moviegoers. Meanwhile, the mid-August launch date proved perfect for It Ends with Us. The feature was previously scheduled for February and June 2024, it only ended up here because of filming delays incurred by last year’s dual labor strikes. However, that put It Ends with Us in a sweet spot on the calendar where The Help and Crazy Rich Asians thrived. By August, audiences want something different from more explosions and punching. That’s where a women-driven drama adapting a popular book comes into play. It Ends with Us soared at the box office and looks poised to become one of the year;s biggest sleeper hits.

Twisters had another fantastic hold this weekend dipping only 31% to add another $15.8 million to its domestic haul which now stands at a mighty $223 million. This one will have no problem gliding past $250 million in its impressive domestic run and could even make a run for $265-275 million depending on how it legs out the rest of August. Twisters is on track to become only the 21st Universal Pictures release ever to crack $250 million domestically. Even if its domestic haul ended with $255 million, it'll become the 11th-biggest non-Illumination Universal Pictures release ever in North America. Like I've said before, who knew there was so much demand for more Twister movies?!?

It was nothing short of “game over” for Borderlands as this Eli Roth directorial effort got off to a hideous box office start. Grossing just $8.8 million this weekend, the $110 million budgeted Borderlands was a staggering failure on countless levels. Among video game movies, Borderlands was roughly on par with the domestic debuts of Hitman: Agent 47 and the 1993 Super Mario Bros. movie. Borderlands also set all the wrong kinds of records for its lead actors. Kevin Hart, for instance, in one of his first post-December 2019 theatrical release acting credits, scored one of his very worst domestic openings ever. Cate Blanchett doesn't have many movies that opened in wide release immediately under her belt (she's an arthouse actor, after all), but even among those minimal titles, Borderlands did poorly.

This is also an absolutely dreadful bow for a Lionsgate release, especially since the studios had a terrible year at the domestic box office. Lionsgate has only had one 2024 title crack $30+ million domestically (The Strangers: Chapter 1) and Borderlands follows up other 2024 disappointments for the studio like Arthur the King and The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare. The reasons Borderlands bombed were endless. The source material was never popular enough to warrant a feature film adaptation. A half-hearted marketing campaign. Fans of the games finding its deviations to the source material off-putting. Nothing went right here. A disastrous D+ CinemaScore indicates Borderlands has no hopes of improving in the future. Remember, even Morbius got a C+ CinemaScore two years ago!

In fourth place, Despicable Me 4 dipped 30% to gross another $8 million for a $330.2 million domestic haul. That's a significant improvement over the $5.9 million sixth weekend of Despicable Me 2, which faced way more family-friendly competition over that weekend. Despicable Me 4 is running just $8.1 million behind that predecessor at the same point in its domestic run.  Trap didn’t collapse this weekend, but it did need slightly better than a 56% decline to compensate for an underwhelming domestic bow. Taking in another $6.7 million, the latest M. Night Shyamalan feature has grossed $28.6 million domestically. It’ll surpass Knock at the Cabin's lifetime gross next weekend and there’s a good chance it surpasses Lady in the Water’s domestic cume before its North American run wraps up. Definitely not an ideal box office run, but admittedly, also not a flop.

Inside Out 2 kept on chugging with another $4.9 million (a tiny 27% decrease from last weekend) for a $636.4 million domestic total. The latest Pixar movie has now narrowly surpassed 2023’s biggest domestic performer, Barbie. This movie’s performance has been absolutely incredible and it’s quite likely it’ll crack $650 million before it finishes up its big screen run. Harold and the Purple Crayon fell off 48% this weekend to gross only another $3.1 million for a disastrous $12.8 million domestic haul. This one’s going to struggle to crack $20 million domestically.

In ninth place was newcomer Cuckoo, which grossed $3 million from 1,503 locations. This one didn’t break out at the box office but it also performed better than most other Neon horror movies (Longlegs obviously exempted). Its debut was ahead of Infinity Pool’s domestic launch last January, for example. Made and marketed cheaply, Cuckoo will be just fine in the long run. This titles also on track to become only the 11th Neon release ever to crack $5 million domestically. Six of those projects were released in the last 19 months, a good sign for Neon’s increasing strength in the marketplace. 

Even with another horror movie from Neon in the marketplace, Longlegs grossed another $2 million (a 53% decline from last weekend) for a $71.2 million domestic total. In its final frame before its wide release debut, Didi scored another $650,000. That sum came from 200 locations for a $3,250 per theater average, bringing this indie daring to a $1.6 million domestic total before its theater count explodes. Meanwhile, A Quiet Place: Day One fell 66% this frame to gross another $475,000. This hit blockbuster has now accumulated $138.5 million in North America. The Firing Squad collapsed in its second weekend of release, falling 72% to add $245,000 to an anemic domestic run amounting to just $1.5 million. Abysmal numbers. Among summer 2024 non-Fathom Events titles that immediately opened in wide release, only six performed worse than The Firing Squad.

Sing Sing continues to slowly roll out to the public. In its fifth weekend of domestic play, Sing Sing expanded to just 38 locations and grossed $226,965. With a per theater average of $5,820 this weekend, Sing Sing has grossed a robust $821,862 domestically. CatVideoFest 2024 fell 63% this weekend, but still grossed a strong $102,330 from just 55 locations (for a $1,861 per theater average). After ten days, this motion picture has grossed $428,561.

Poor Kneecap, in its second weekend of release, couldn’t recover from its disastrous theatrical rollout out (courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics). IndieWire reports the title grossed $103,426 this weekend at 204 theaters for just a $507 per theater average. After ten days, Kneecap has grossed just $819,650 and will struggle to gross $1 million domestically. What a tragic end for one of the years best movies. Metrograph Pictures made its big theatrical distributor debut this weekend with film festival acquisition Good One. The feature grossed $30,013 from three locations for a $10,004 per theater average. The Conversation opened to $17,000 from five locations for a $3,400 per theater average. Finally, Sugarcane opened in a single theater and grossed $7,648.

The top movies in America this weekend grossed $155.7 million, an impressive haul that's up 45% from this same weekend last year when Barbie ruled the domestic box office for one last weekend. This haul also means August 2024 has grossed, to date, roughly $440 million, putting it ahead of August 2021's haul after just 11 days (it'll surpass August 2022's $466.9 million gross sometime this week). If the newcomers over the next three weeks don't totally capsize, August 2024 should become only the 18th August ever domestically to exceed $800 million. Summer 2024 appears to be heading towards a great ending.