The battle of the box office produced a stunning result. As always, I turn to wonderful and amazing The Numbers for the latest in box office projections. In its fifth week, Top Gun: Maverick came out on top with a projected $30,5000,176. Elvis, in its debut week, took second place with a projected $30,500,000. Jurassic World: Dominion came in third place with a projected $26,440,000.
What is left to say about Top Gun: Maverick? Tom Cruise’s movie continues to dominate the box office. More importantly, Top Gun: Maverick provides studios with the proper playbook when trying to revive an older beloved franchise. This movie needs to be mandatory viewing for studio executives.
At any rate, with a remarkable fifth week, Top Gun: Maverick also crossed the $1 billion mark. The worldwide box office number comes in at $1,006,423,000. Simply amazing. Also, keep in mind that Top Gun: Maverick has achieved this feat without being released in China and Russia!
To put this in context, the unstoppable juggernaut known as the MCU had their movie Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness brought in a worldwide box office of $943,409,533 over the course of eight weeks. That’s right. Top Gun: Maverick took down the apex predator in Marvel Studios in a fewer amount of weeks!
Talk about impressive. For those of us who are tired of the MCU dominating the box office, it is so refreshing to see a movie that is not a superhero movie taking down the MCU and grabbing the crown for the number 1 movie in 2022.
What is also notable is that Top Gun: Maverick is Tom Cruise’s highest-grossest movie of his career. Mission: Impossible – Fallout from 2018 had been Cruise’s best-grossing movie with $791.1 million worldwide. Top Gun: Maverick easily obliterated that number.
Elvis had a solid debut of $30.5 million. That number is pretty close to most early predictions. Elvis only had a budget of $85 million. Factor in an estimated $42.5 million in advertising and promotions and Warner Bros just needs to get around $127 million to break even.
I am not sure what kind of legs Elvis is going to have over the next few weeks. I know Elvis is popular in the United States, but I am unsure what kind of worldwide box office appetite there will be for Elvis.
Jurassic World: Dominion had a fairly big decline as it came in at third place with a projected $26,440,000. This movie has been completely ravaged by critics. However, it appears that a sizable portion of the movie-going audience could not care less about the critics.
The worldwide box office for Jurassic World: Dominion clocks in at $746,500,111. To be sure, Jurassic World: Dominion is going to fall well short of Jurassic World’s $1.6 billion worldwide box office and Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom’s $1.3 billion worldwide box office. However, Jurassic World: Dominion is still going to make Universal plenty of cash. The budget was $165 million budget plus an estimated advertising and promotion budget of $82.5 million. Universal is going to pocket 50% of the domestic box office ($151 million), roughly 40% from the international box office outside of China (131.6 million), and 25% from China (28.5 million) for a total of an estimated $311.1 million. This means that Universal has already made an estimated $63.6 million by its third week at the box office.
The other big shocking news from the weekend box office was Lightyear completely bombing in the theaters in just its second week. The numbers are awful. Lightyear clocked in all the way down in fifth place. A Pixar movie in fifth place in just its second week. Stunning.
Lightyear even lost to The Black Phone, an indie horror movie. Yup. That happened. The Black Phone took fourth place and pulled in $23,370,000 domestically.
The Black Phone already has a worldwide box office of $35,844,000. The Black Phone only had an estimated $18 million budget. Factor in an estimated advertising and promotion budget of $9 million and you get a total of an estimated $27 million that Universal must make before they start turning a profit. Well, Universal is already in the black just after the opening weekend with an estimated $8 million in profit already.
But, let’s get back to the stunning news of Lightyear completely bombing out in just its second week at the box office. Lightyear brought in just $17,669,000. Disney has to be mortified and embarrassed at how Pixar dropped the ball so badly with Lightyear. We have already discussed the potential reasons why Lightyear completely failed. This really was a story that nobody was asking for at all.
At any rate, let’s put this into perspective by comparing Lightyear to Pixar’s previously two weakest performing movies in Cars 3 and The Good Dinosaur. No, I am not going to include Onward. That would be an unfair comparison since the pandemic closures hit right after Onward’s opening week at the box office.
In its second week, Lightyear’s total domestic box office is $88.7 million. In its second week, Cars 3’s total domestic box office was $98.7 million. In its second week, The Good Dinosaur’s total domestic box office was $75.7 million. At this point, Cars 3 has now separated itself from Lightyear. So, now the battle for the biggest Pixar bomb comes down to a slap fight between Lightyear and The Good Dinosaur.
The Good Dinosaur ended up with a $123 million domestic box office and a $210.6 million international box office. Lightyear is currently at $88.7 million domestic box office and just $63.6 million international box office. This is going to be interesting to see if Lightyear can save face and at least beat The Good Dinosaur at the box office.
Another interesting comparison is going to be how well Lightyear does against the other big animated movie of 2022 Sonic the Hedgehog 2. Sonic the Hedgehog 2 managed to pull in a $398.2 million worldwide box office. Lightyear is currently at a $152.3 million worldwide box office. It appears that Lightyear has no chance of catching Sonic 2. A Pixar movie starring a beloved character from their most popular franchise losing to Sonic 2. Wow.
All right, that is it for this week. We will check back in after next weekend and see if Top Gun: Maverick keeps attracting moviegoers. Of course, the big new movie this upcoming weekend is Minions: The Rise of Gru. Universal has to be salivating over the opportunity for their Illumination Entertainment movie to embarrass Pixar at the box office.
