THOR: LOVE AND THUNDER hammered its way to the top of North American box offices. By taking in $143M, it easily outpaced the competition. LOVE AND THUNDER is the fourth film in the THOR series, and each new entry has grossed higher than the prior release, which is not at all a sure bet for franchise films.
The original THOR opened in North America on 5/2/2011 and grossed $66M for its opening weekend and went on to a total run of $181M. Two years later, THOR: THE DARK WORLD opened on 11/8/2013, with $86M on its opening weekend and $206M overall. In 2017, THOR: RAGNAROK opened to $123M and produced a total run of $315M.
There was some concern that the box office for this year’s THOR would be held back by its relatively low 67% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes. Never fear, audiences gave it an 82% rating, and turned out in record numbers. THOR: LOVE AND THUNDER are $!43M opening was 16% higher than that of THOR: RAGNAROK 5 years ago, and the total run now appears headed for $350M, assuming that it can hold up acceptably in its second and subsequent weekends.
Speaking of second weekends, MINIONS: THE RISE OF GRU suffered an uncharacteristic sharp drop from last week’s record-breaking opening. It took in $45.6M this weekend, which was a rather steep decline of 57%. This can be attributed in part to this week’s massive opening for THOR, which also appealed to family audiences.
It might also be exacerbated by an unusually large turnout last weekend during the Fourth of July holiday weekend. In fact, GRU’s week two decline may not be due to any fundamental flaw in the film itself, and we are predicting that it will stabilize in the weeks to come and enjoy a long and profitable run throughout the rest of the summer.
TOP GUN: MAVERICK had another fine performance by finishing third with $15.5M in its seventh weekend, a drop of only 40%. MAVERICK’s total domestic gross stands at $597M, which places it as the 12th top-grossing film of all time.
ELVIS finished in fourth place, generating $11M and dropping 40% from last weekend. Its total gross after 17 days is $91M, putting it on pace to finish its total theatrical run with at least $100M.
Our favorite indie title of the summer is MARCEL THE SHELL WITH SHOES ON, which distributor A24 is managing expertly with an incremental, platform release strategy. This weekend, MARCEL played at 48 locations and took in $340K, for a per-theatre average of, $7,083 which placed it at 8th out of all pictures in the release.
All in all, the weekend finished at a very strong 121% of the same weekend in 2019.
