Box Office Breakdown for Weekend of 6/29/25
What’s up, Geeks + Gamers? It’s ODIN!
F1 Opens Better Than Expected, But Still Has Massive Budget Problem
With the 4th of July holiday coming up this week and stronger-than-expected numbers on the way, especially from international audiences, it seems that F1, the new Brad Pitt/Joseph Kosinski movie is off to a great start. The problems arise, however, when you remember that the projected budget for the film is reported as hovering between $200-$300 million before marketing costs, so it needs to pull in roughly $600 to $900 million at the global box office just to make its money back. With an opening weekend of $144,000,000 worldwide (which is quite a bit more than the expected – $115 million by the likes of Deadline before the weekend started), an average run at the box office from this point on would likely make F1 around $432 million globally by the time it leaves theaters. Since the word-of-mouth on this movie is quite positive, and the 4th of July audience will likely favor action movies like this one, there is a good chance for F1 to do better than the average. The real problem for this movie going forward is not only its massive budget but also the fact that we are only days away from the release of Jurassic World Rebirth and about a week away from James Gunn’s Superman. For those that have followed me for any length of time, you know that I do not buy into the expression that competition somehow hurts the box office of individual movies. Even with ticket prices and inflation being what they are, if someone wants to see a movie, they are going to see it at some point. That being said, having this much of a crowded field will likely eat into some of the overall numbers, as it is well known that movie quality has dropped, especially in recent years, and more and more people are willing to wait for movies to release on streaming if they feel like they won’t be missing anything.
The unique situation here is that you will have hardcore DCEU/James Gunn fans flocking to Superman, the dinonuts heading to Rebirth, and then a bunch of normies who will have to decide which movie is actually worth their money or, at the very least, which deserves to be seen first. It is with this in mind that the likes of F1 have an advantage because there have not been any issues with previous franchise releases (as there are for the Jurassic World films that have been losing their audience consistently over the past decade), and there is not a potential lukewarm/people tired of James Gunn mindset as there is for Superman. In the end, no one really knows how these movies will shake out at the box office. My gut tells me that F1 will likely benefit the most from the normie audiences, as it seems to be a safe bet (it currently rocks an 84% “Most Excellent” score after 40 reviews over on Criticless) and that after that, Superman will probably have the most upside since the James Gunn conversation likely doesn’t impact normies outside of the online commentary space. The reason this matters is that these three movies will be fighting for premium screens (PLF), and theaters will likely have more than one showing for each, or at least 1-2 of them once they have all been released. With PLFs driving large portions of the revenues for movies these days, the battle over the next few weeks will be very interesting and, at the very least (and most importantly), will be great news for many of the struggling theaters that have yet to recover from the COVID/studio stupidity of the last five years.
According to the-numbers.com, the top 5 this weekend domestically were:
- F1 ($55.6 million as A new release)
- How to Train Your Dragon (47% drop in 3rd weekend of release)
- Elio (49% drop in 2nd weekend of release)
- M3GAN 2.0 ($10.2 million as a new release)
- 28 Years Later (68% drop in 2nd weekend of release)
M3GAN 2.0 Fails to Build On Original Audience
After the huge success back of the 1st M3GAN film in 2002, it seemed inevitable that a sequel would be greenlit quickly. Though this is sadly the pattern of Hollywood these days, this opening for M3GAN 2.0 will hopefully remind studios that you cannot trap lightning in a bottle by force and that sometimes you should just let a good thing be what it is. With a budget of $25 million (double that of the original), the newest film made only ONE- THIRD of the domestic opening of the original… ouch. For perspective, remember that the first one came out in January of 2022, and January is notorious for being the month where films go to die. Yet, because of marketing and word-of-mouth, the first M3GAN was able to make an adjusted $32.6 million in its domestic opening and went on to make almost $200 million globally (adjusted) from an adjusted budget of about $12.8 million. With a global debut of only $17,158,000, there is a good chance that M3GAN 2.0 will not be able to make its money back theatrically despite the fact that from the reviews of those who have seen it, many are having a good time with it. Currently, on Criticless, it has a 59% “Decent” rating, with only 15 reviews currently posted. It seems that the audience that made the first film such a surprise hit in 2022 was not keen to check out what appeared from trailers to be a simple cash grab by the studio; if only other audiences could have had that kind of common sense/backbone.
28 Years Later Has a Chance at Profits as Elio Flops
Lastly, we will talk about two holdovers from last weekend that we can now make some official projections on, with the first two weeks having finally passed. In the case of 28 Years Later, despite the fact that it dropped a massive 68% domestically from its opening weekend, the international audience is giving the film some hope of breaking even. With a global total of around $103 million, we can project that 28 Years Later will make between $147,220,000 and $206,108,000 by the end of its run on a $60 million budget. That means it will either lose about $10 million or make about $15 million since a large portion of its money is coming from the less-profitable international audiences, where studios only get about 40% of the box office versus the 55% they get from domestic theaters. All in all, 28 Years Later will be a bit of a wash once VODs and such bring in some money. However, this does mean that the next film in this 28 Years series, which comes out next year, is in a lot of trouble, especially with The Marvels director Nia DaCosta randomly taking charge as Danny Boyle worked on 28 Years Later at the same time.
Another box office flop for Disney can now also be confirmed, as Elio ended its 2nd weekend globally with only $56,345,195. Though some may point to the 2nd-weekend domestic drop not being as high as it could have been, history is not on the studio’s side. We can now project that the film, which cost between $150 million and $300 million, depending on who you believe, will make between $80,493,136 and $112,690,390 worldwide by the time it leaves theaters. Regardless of the movie’s budget, we are looking at losses of at least -$200 million… OOF. Though some in the media try to blame the audience for original ideas failing at the box office, anyone who is honest knows that this is a problem studios have made for themselves and, as such, means it is they who deserve the vast majority of the blame for their current failures. The only bright side for Elio is that Disney will try to spin the film’s losses when it inevitably “pays itself” to show the movie on Disney+; while Tony and other shills at Deadline and other trades might fall for it like the “dummies” they are, we will not here on G+G!
Check out my latest box office videos on my YouTube channel HERE!
If you want further analysis on these or any other films, check out the full charting I do over at my website. Have a wonderful rest of your day, and, as always, God bless!
(If you ever want further insight into my methodology, see my previous articles HERE and HERE and the RCC method I use to break down movies internationally HERE.)
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