So far, the summer of 2019 has been a bit depressing for the film industry. Taking “Avengers: Endgame” out of the conversation (considering it’s a record-breaking behemoth that skews all numbers), the summer has been full of films that have a ton of expectations and end up disappointing at the box office, including “The Secret Life of Pets 2,” “Men in Black: International,” “Godzilla: King of the Monsters,” and others. But it appears that the first days of July is here to wipe the slate clean, thanks to “Spider-Man: Far From Home.”
Debuting on a Tuesday, the latest ‘Spider-Man’ film finished its six-day opening today with an incredible $185 million debut domestically. Coming into the week, analysts were predicting anywhere from $125 million to $150 million over the first six days, and clearly, those forecasts didn’t come close to the actual performance.
All told, ‘Far From Home’ now holds the six-day record for the July 4th holiday weekend, beating Sam Raimi’s “Spider-Man 2” and its $180 million over the same number of days. The opening also represents the best six-day start for any film to come from Sony. And when you take into consideration international debut, “Spider-Man: Far From Home” now sits at an impressive $580 million worldwide. From the way things are looking, ‘Far From Home’ is poised to be the first ‘Spider-Man’ film to hit $1 billion worldwide.
This sort of debut isn’t just the result of a quality marketing campaign, and ‘Far From Home’ had a slew of positives going for it coming into the weekend. The new ‘Spider-Man’ film is the first Marvel Cinematic Universe film to be released since the record-breaking ‘Endgame,’ and Marvel Studios smartly leaned into the story that sprang from the end of the latest ‘Avengers’ film, focusing on the fallout of Tony Stark’s death. Capitalizing on ‘Endgame’ isn’t all that Sony/Marvel did right. The film itself is a clear upgrade from the previous film, ‘Homecoming,’ with critics and fans absolutely loving every second of it.
Word of mouth is expected to be huge for the film, as well. ‘Far From Home’ not only has twists and turns that are shocking for most audiences during the film’s run-time, but the two post-credits scenes have even more reveals that almost beg fans to buy another ticket and rewatch the entire film once again. All told, Marvel Studios and Sony ended up supplying the perfect dessert course for the massive feast that ‘Endgame’ provided.
But ‘Spider-Man’ aside, there’s plenty more to talk about with this weekend’s box office. Ari Aster, coming off his incredible directorial debut “Hereditary,” returned to theaters just a year later with his latest horror film, “Midsommar.” Debuting with a 5 day total of $10.9 million, Aster’s latest film hit right along expectations. But as “Hereditary” proved last year, expectations, predictions, and surveys mean almost nothing in the case of the director’s works. The 2018 film, “Hereditary,” had an impressive box office run for A24 last year, even with a terrible ‘D+’ CinemaScore, and “Midsommar” is set up to do perhaps even better, as the new film earned a respectable ‘C+.’
One thing that “Midsommar” has working against it is the buzz from critics. The film isn’t nearly as beloved as Aster’s last film, with only an 82% Rotten Tomatoes score. Granted, that’s still plenty “fresh” but it’s not the universal acclaim that is likely to get some people to check out the film. Ultimately, the second weekend is going to give us a much better idea of what we can expect out of A24’s newest horror film.
As for the holdovers from last week, the much-hyped “Avengers: Endgame” re-expansion continued to pay off for Disney as the film earned another $3.1 million this weekend, which puts the domestic total up to $847.9 million. But really, all we care about is the worldwide total, right? Well, ‘Endgame’ now sits at $2.772 billion, only $16 million behind “Avatar.” It really doesn’t seem like there’s enough in the tank for it to overtake the James Cameron epic, but Disney/Marvel Studios certainly is getting close.
In other good news for Disney, “Toy Story 4” is now at $306 million domestically, bringing it across the $300 million mark in only three weekends. Not shabby at all. And because it really is an embarrassment of riches for the Mouse House, “Aladdin” has crossed a milestone of its own with a worldwide total of $921.7 million, bringing it within striking distance of the coveted $1 billion mark.
And finally, in non-Disney news, Danny Boyle’s “Yesterday” had a fantastic hold in its second weekend, only dropped an estimated -37% for a $10.8 million weekend. The Beatles-inspired musical now sits at a domestic total of $37 million, which is a really solid number after 10 days.
Next weekend, the two major debuts seemingly don’t stand to factor too much into the reign of “Spider-Man: Far From Home.” Florida-based horror film “Crawl” and Dave Bautista/Kumail Nanjiani-starring “Stuber” are both hitting wide release, but will likely be footnotes.
Here’s the top 10 for July 5 to July 7:
1. Spider-Man: Far From Home – $93.6M ($185M Overall)
2. Toy Story 4 – $34.3M ($306M)
3. Yesterday – $10.8M ($37M)
4. Annabelle Comes Home – $9.8M ($50M)
5. Aladdin – $7.6M ($321M)
6. Midsommar – $6.6M ($10.9M)
7. The Secret Life of Pets 2 – $4.8M ($141M)
8. Men in Black International – $3.6M ($72M)
9. Avengers: Endgame – $3.1M ($848M)
10. Rocketman – $2.8M ($89M)