Twisters wrangles up a good storm at the box office

Quick, someone call Tracy Lawrence and tell him to re-release his 1995 country tune "Texas Tornado". Apparently tornadoes are big in pop culture once again. 28 years after the original Twister touched down as a box office hit, Twisters wrangled up a mighty $80.5 million over its opening weekend. That dazzling number blew away pre-release expectations for a $55-65 million debut. That's the second-biggest non-Inside Out 2 domestic opening weekend of 2024, only behind Dune: Part Two. It’s by far the biggest North American opening weekend for a disaster movie. That bow's roughly double the $41 million opening weekend of Twister. Twisters also almost matched the entire lifetime domestic gross of the last movie anchored by Twisters leading lady Daisy Edgar-Jones, Where the Crawdads Sing. Furthermore, the $10.7 million Thursday gross of Twisters surpassed the combined lifetime domestic hauls of director Lee Isaac Chung's previous three movies.

On paper, a costly Twister legacy sequel sounded like it could easily become a box office boondoggle. However, the dearth of Twister follow-ups and recent disaster movies gave Twisters some specialness to moviegoers. This wasn’t the umpteenth Terminator reboot, this was a domain audiences hadn’t seen in forever. Meanwhile, the rural setting and PG-13 rating made Twisters stand out amongst other summer 2024 blockbusters. It didn’t hurt that Glen Powell is becoming a solid draw for moviegoers, ditto Daisy Edgar-Jones. Deadpool & Wolverine feels different enough from Twisters that it likely won’t capsize this summer blockbuster next weekend.

Some other assorted Twisters box office trivia: This is the biggest opening weekend in history for a non-Jurassic Park/World movie released under the Amblin banner. Exempting Jurassic and Fast & Furious sequels, Twisters also scored the eight biggest domestic Universal Pictures opening in history. This is also already the second biggest movie Maura Tierney has ever appeared in, only behind Liar Liar. Any way you slice it, this one’s a massive winner. If Twisters holds up alright in the weeks to come, it has a good shot at cracking $200 million domestically. Alright Tracy Lawrence, time to ride this pop culture wave!

In its third weekend, Despicable Me 4 kept chugging with a solid $23.8 million haul, down 45% from last weekend. Its $259.4 million domestic gross puts it ahead of the first movie's $252.7 million haul. It should surpass Despicable Me 3's $264.6 million domestic cume this week. Summer 2024 champ Inside Out 2 dipped another 36% this weekend for a sixth-weekend gross of $12.8 million. This smash hit has now grossed $596.3 million and will become only the 15th movie ever to crack $600 million domestically (without adjusting for inflation of course) sometime this week.  

Last weekend's horror breakout hit Longlegs was holding real well from Monday to Thursday. Those solid weekday numbers suggested a decent second weekend hold could be in the cards. That potentiality has come to pass. This Osgood Perkins feature grossed another $11.7 million this frame, a remarkable 48% drop from last weekend. Remove the $3 million Longlegs made at Thursday night shows and this horror title only dipped 38% this frame. Even the 48% drop is a strong one for a scary movie, especially one that sparked a divisive reaction from audiences. Whether you loved it or hated it, Longlegs is a film, like Hereditary six years ago, people are talking about. That'll keep you afloat at the box office for a few weeks. Longlegs has now grossed $44.6 million and will soon surpass Parasite to become the biggest Neon movie ever domestically.

A Quiet Place: Day One eased 46% in its fourth weekend of release for another $6.1 million and a $127.6 million domestic total. A final haul between $140 and $145 million looks to be in the cards. Fly Me to the Moon failed to stabilize this weekend as it plummeted 65% for a second weekend gross of just $3.3 million. An abnormally large decline for a romantic comedy, this one won't be in theaters much longer. After 10 days, this star-studded Apple movie has grossed just $16.3 million domestically. Fellow Sony/Columbia Pictures holdover Bad Boys: Ride or Die, meanwhile, fell 37% for another $2.67 million in its seventh weekend of release. This smash hit has now grossed $189.3 million, who saw that coming at the start of the season?

Bad Newz opened to $1 million from 477 locations, a perfectly decent sum for this new comedy. MaXXXine continued its quick tumble at the domestic box office this weekend. It grossed an additional $819,242, a 60% drop from last weekend for a $13.9 million haul. MaXXXine is within spitting distance of dethroning It Comes at Night and it will likely surpass Room's $14.6 million domestic haul to become the 17th-biggest A24 movie ever. In a seemingly inexplicable development, The Bikeriders returned to the top ten (in tenth place) with $700,000. That sudden 75% leap from last weekend is due to Bikeriders getting attached to fellow Comcast movie Twisters at drive-in screenings. This Jeff Nichols feature has now grossed a disappointing $21.2 million.

The latest IFC Films horror title to go into wide release debuted this weekend in the form of Oddity. This feature was no Late Night with the Devil or In a Violent Nature, though. It only grossed $555,500 from 790 locations for a per theater average of $703. With competition from Longlegs and A Quiet Place: Day One, not to mention a more esoteric premise than other 2024 IFC Films horror fare, Oddity was always doomed to a quiet debut. Sound of Hope: The Story of Possum Trot, its third weekend, had another severe plummet. Grossing just $$424,717 this frame (a 69% plummet from last frame), Possum Trot has now barely cracked $11 million. Its domestic run now stands to end in the $12.5 million range. That's a smidge behind Do You Believe? and One Night with King among faith-based dramas.

Touch eased just 38% this frame for another $276,000 and a decent 10-day domestic total of $916,000. Thelma, in its fifth weekend of release, grossed another $230,000 for a terrific $8.18 million domestic total. The Haley Bennett feature Widows Clicquot gulped down $190,000 from 102 theaters for a $16,021 per theater average.. Nothing extraordinary, but also not terrible for an adult drama flying so under the radar. Kinds of Kindness lost nearly 600 theaters this weekend, so unsurprisingly, it had a steep 64% drop this frame. Grossing another $115,000, Kindness (which has made $4.95 million to date) is now on track for a domestic total just over $5 million. This should’ve done better, but it didn’t cost too much and it’s just cool something this weird (not to mention well-made) exists.

Still playing in only four locations, Sing Sing grossed $64,084 for a per theater average of $16,021. After ten days in just a quartet of movie theaters, Sing Sing has grossed $$234,136. Crumb Catcher only grossed $20,866 from 55 locations for a disastrous per theater average of $379. New drama Crossing opened to just $16,236 from a quartet of theater for a per theater average of $4,059. Great Absence opened to $2,480 from a solitary movie theater. Not a super lucrative frame for arthouse newcomers, though at least Widows Clicquot did genuinely do much better than expected.

 As for Hundreds of Beavers, it snatched up another $4,343 last weekend (its 25th consecutive frame of domestic play) at just five theaters. As of last Sunday, it's now grossed $435,476 domestically. If a delightful theatrical screening of this author's personal favorite movie of 2024 so far isn't playing near you, Hundreds of Beavers is available through the public library streaming service Hoopla!

The top 10 movies this weekend grossed $142 million, down 54% from this same weekend last year. No need to fret, though. This weekend would've always come up short compared to last year thanks to this frame in 2023 housing the Barbenheimer phenomenon. For comparison's sake, this weekend was down about 9% from the July 20-22, 2018 frame. It also improved 11% over the July 24-26, 2015 frame. In other words, this was a perfectly cromulent haul for a typical late July.

July 2024 has narrowly exceeded $700 million domestically. With Deadpool & Wolverine closing out the month with at least a projected $165+ million, July 2024 won't have any problem cracking $1 billion domestically. That'll make it the first month of 2024 to crack the 10-digit mark in North America. July 2024 is also on track to emerge as only the fourth domestic month to exceed that mark since the pandemic began. Interestingly, two of those previous three post-2020 $1+ billion months were July's!

Meanwhile, summer 2024 has exceeded $2.2 billion. This season could reach as high as $2.6 billion by the end of the month. There's a good chance (though far from guaranteed) August 2024 could pull in enough dough to let summer 2024 surpass the $3.39 billion domestic haul of summer 2022. For the sake of movie theater owners and the theatrical landscape, that sizeable gross (especially after a dismal May 2024 kicked off the season) would be most welcome. All our box office hopes rest with you Trap and It Ends with Us.