Box Office: ALADDIN is Another Giant Memorial Day Disney Hit, ENDGAME Crosses $800 Million

Box Office: ALADDIN is Another Giant Memorial Day Disney Hit, ENDGAME Crosses $800 Million

Welcome to the Beat’s Weekend Box Office Recap!
It looks like Walt Disney Pictures will continue to be the dominant force at the box office for the rest of the summer. Even the movie that was thought to be one of their weaker summer offerings, Guy Ritchie‘s live action remake of Aladdin starring Will Smith, surpassed most projections (including my own).
Disney opened Ritchie’s movie, which also stars relative newcomers Mena Massoud and Naomi Scott, into 4,476 theaters — the third widest domestic release ever — over the four-day Memorial Day weekend. After bringing in $7 million in Thursday previews, Aladdin scored $31 million its opening Friday (including those previews) and looked like it was good to make more than $100 million over the long weekend after making $90.4 million in its first three days.
As of Monday, the fantasy musical based on the 1992 animated movie has grossed an estimated $112.7 million domestically over the four-day holiday weekend, about $25,000 per theater. That makes it the fifth-biggest opening for a Memorial Day release, which also means that Disney now possesses three of the top 10 Memorial Day openers — six if you include the three Fox movies that have topped the holiday box office (which I don’t). Aladdin opened higher than last year’s Star Wars offering Solo: A Star Wars but not as well as the #1 Memorial Day opener, Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, which opened with $139 million in 2007.
Besides being Ritchie’s biggest opening movie, it’s also Smith’s second biggest opening after 2016’s Suicide Squad. Smith and Ritchie’s hard work paid off as audiences gave Aladdin an “A” CinemaScore, liking the movie more than the critics, which also means it could be a good word-of-mouth draw against the stronger offerings opening over the next couple weeks.
Keanu Reeves‘ John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum took a sizable plunge in its second weekend after an impressive opening weekend. It ended up with an estimated $31 million (down 45%) over the four-day holiday to cross the $100 million mark with $107.6 million in 11 days. That officially makes it the highest grossing film in the series with the fourth installment already slated for May 21, 2021. Overseas, the movie has grossed $74.4 million.
Even bigger news is the fact that Marvel Studios’ Avengers: Endgame crossed the $800 million domestic mark this weekend, something that’s only been achieved by one other movie, Lucasfilm (and Disney’s) Star Wars: The Force Awakens, which will probably retain the record for highest-grossing movie domestically. Endgame is edging closer to surpassing Avatar for worldwide gross, though. This weekend, it dropped to third place with $22.3 million over the four days (down 26% from last weekend) with a domestic total of $803.6 million.
Warner Bros’ Pokemon: Detective Pikachu took fourth place with $17.3 million in 3,824 theaters with $120 million grossed domestically so far, which isn’t that great. It has nearly doubled that amount overseas, though, and might be seen as “profitable enough” for a sequel. We’ll see.
Opening lower in the top 10, Screen Gems’ dark superhero thriller Brightburn, produced by James Gunn and starring Elizabeth Banks, made an estimated $9.5 million in 2,607 theaters over the four-day weekend. The movie only cost $6 million to make, but it’s “C+” CinemaScore doesn’t seem to show strong support for the movie to have legs.
Similarly, Olivia Wilde‘s directorial debut, the raunchy R-rated comedy Booksmart, released by United Artists Releasing into 2,505 theaters, also disappointed. Starring Kaitlyn Dever and Beanie Feldstein, it made $8.7 million in its first four days, less than $3,500 per theater. It also started off a grassroots social media groundswell to try to convince more people to go see it, although the movie’s “B+” CinemaScore is a little lower than some might have expected considering the positive reviews. (There was also a bit of shaming of Endgame directors Joe and Anthony Russo, who tweeted suggesting people should go see their movie over the holiday weekend. People felt that the directors of the biggest movie of the year should be promoting smaller indies that need the boost rather their own work. Welcome to 2019, folks.)
The rest of the top 10 was fairly standard with A Dog’s Journey having a bigger drop in its second weekend than both The Hustle and The Intruder, which both lost over 600 theaters on Friday.

This Week’s Top 10: 

(Note: All numbers below are four-day weekend estimates including Monday.)

Last Memorial Day, Solo: A Star Wars Story  was the only new wide release, and it won the weekend with $103 million, about $10 million less than Aladdin. Last year’s top 10 grossed $218 million over the four-day holiday weekend, which is only slightly more than what the top 10 grossed this year, at least according to estimates.
Check back on Wednesday for The Beat‘s Box Office Preview for next weekend, which includes Godzilla, King of the Monsters, the Elton John biopic Rocketman and the Octavia Spencer thriller Ma.