The summer box office is under way and it began with a thud. May 2024 was a really bad month for the box office. Perhaps a historically bad month. Not counting the two COVID years where movies didn’t really exist, this was the worst May at the domestic box office since May 1998. While the internet has certainly been buzzing about the death of cinema, or at least the death of theaters, I’ll point out that this wasn’t particularly surprising. I noted in my May preview the fact that “Deadpool and Wolverine,” which was the month’s big tentpole event, was removed from the schedule due to the strikes and nothing really stepped up to replace it. That said, it doesn’t help that just about everything else that was on the schedule either hit on the low end of their expectations or straight-up disappointed. “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” was the only movie to overperform, but “The Fall Guy,” “IF,” “Furiosa,” and “Garfield” all kinda collapsed.
Is this a sign of things to come or just a strange anomaly of a month? Well, there’s legit concerns about the future of the theatrical experience for a wide variety of reasons, but even in the current landscape, it’s worth reminding people that even this year there’s been stories of movies that did well, like with “Dune: Part Two” and “Godzilla x Kong” in March, not to mention the “Barbenheimer” phenomenon of last year or other movies like “Top Gun: Maverick,” “Avatar: The Way of Water,” and “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” in recent years. People have shown that they are still willing to show up to the movies when there’s a movie that they want to show up for. So is there anything in June that people are going to show up for? Well, there’s at least a title or two where we’ll certainly have conversations if people don’t show up, but let’s dive in and analyze all the options that we have.
As always, release date information for this post is courtesy of boxofficepro.com and the-numbers.com. The movies listed are the ones currently scheduled for a wide release in the United States and Canada and are always subject to change.
June 7 – 9
Sony's "Bad Boys: Ride or Die"
A quick note before diving into the first two new releases of the month is that the weekend of May 31 – June 2 was covered in last month’s preview. Even though two of the three days were in June, the weekend started in May, so that’s where I included it. In that preview, I covered “Haikyu!! The Dumpster Battle” and “Ezra.” As it turns out, there were two other moderate releases that wound up coming out, “In a Violent Nature,” a slasher horror film from the vantage point of the killer, and “Summer Camp,” a comedy starring Diane Keaton, Kathy Bates, and Alfre Woodard who play three best friends who get together for a summer camp reunion after they used to spend every summer there as kids. All four of these movies were moderate releases that opened in around 1,500 theaters. The highest grossing of the bunch was “Haikyu!! The Dumpster Battle,” which opened in seventh with $3.6 million. I also covered “Robot Dreams,” which ended up only opening in two theaters, so I’m guessing that will be expanding here in the next few weeks.
Onto the weekend proper, June begins with the fourth movie in the Bad Boys franchise, Bad Boys: Ride or Die. The first two movies came via Michael Bay in 1995 and 2003, respectively, and starred Will Smith and Martin Lawrence as two off-kilter detectives investigating various drug-related crimes. Both were poorly reviewed, but were of their time and came out at the height of both Will Smith and Michael Bay, so they were both fairly big hits. The franchise was revived in January 2020 with “Bad Boys for Life,” which saw the return of Will Smith and Martin Lawrence, but had the directing duo of Adil and Bilall take over at the helm. The movie became the first breakout hit of 2020, opening to $62.5 million and finishing with $204.4 million… before the world shut down due to COVID. Because of that, it wound up as the highest grossing movie of 2020. Four years later and a pandemic in between, “Ride or Die” comes out with the same cast and crew returning and will try to replicate that success. But was that third movie received well enough to warrant another huge hit in the franchise or are people done with these movies? Also, this is the first big release for Will Smith since the slap incident at the Oscars. Might that affect the movie’s opening? Or have audiences moved on and are willing to forgive him? Box Office Pro is expecting an opening in the range of $45-55 million going into this weekend, but that was also the expectation for “Furiosa” before that opened to just $26 million, so we’ll see what side of the fence this falls on.
Opening alongside “Ride or Die” is the psychological horror film The Watchers, which comes via the Shyamalan clan. Horror has had a bit of an interesting year so far. There’s been several titles that have been well received by audiences and critics, but none of that has translated into high box office turnout. Currently the highest opening weekend for a horror film is “The Strangers: Chapter 1,” which opened to $11.82 million last month and barely topped January’s “Night Swim,” which opened to $11.79 million. Can the Shyamalan name propel this to an opening that’s at least slightly higher than those two movies or is this another $7-10 million opening for a horror film. Now this is a PG-13 psychological horror film, which should open the door for a younger audience to show up and provide counter-programming to the R-rated, male-targeted action film of “Ride or Die” that it’s competing against. But it should be noted that this is not M. Night Shyamalan himself directing. He’s on as producer and has his own movie called “Trap” coming out in August. Directing the movie is his daughter Ishana Night Shyamalan, with her feature-length directorial debut after helping her dad out on the Apple TV+ show “Servant.” The last two movies from M. Night were “Old” in 2021 and “Knock at the Cabin” in 2023, and they opened to $16.8 million and $14.1 million, respectively, so we’ll see if Ishana can hit her dad’s mark on those two movies as she attempts to create a trail herself. As is typical with a Shyamalan horror/thriller, the plot is intended to be a bit mysterious, with a twist that is sure to come, but the general idea involves a young artist, played by Dakota Fanning, who gets stranded in a forest in Ireland.
June 14 – 16
Pixar’s "Inside Out 2"
Only one new wide release on the second weekend of June, but this is the main movie I referenced in the beginning where if it fails, a conversation will need to be had because this is the opening of the newest Pixar film Inside Out 2. It’s worth mentioning that Pixar has had a bit of a rough go of it since COVID as Mother Disney sent three straight movies of there’s directly to Disney+, which got some out of the habit of seeing their movies in theaters. Disney tried to remedy that with “Lightyear,” but failed as that movie massively under-performed based on Toy Story standards. Then there’s the case of “Elemental” last year, which experienced one of Pixar’s worst openings, but then caught on like wildfire and had a very leggy run in theaters, finishing with $154 million domestically and $484 million worldwide. Might that be the course correction Disney and Pixar needed? A stepping stone in the right direction? If there’s a next step to continue moving Pixar in an upward direction, it’s a sequel to “Inside Out,” one of their most successful original films, which made $356.5 million domestically in 2015 after opening to $90.4 million. The story of “Inside Out 2” follows the natural progression of its main protagonist Riley, as it dives into her teenage years, adding a handful more emotions as it tackles a complex time in a young person’s life. Now there’s several examples of Pixar sequels exploding with $100+ million openings. If this becomes the first $100 million opening of 2024, that’s obviously a huge story. But given the aforementioned struggles of Pixar and the continued existence of Disney+, if this movie can at least come close to the opening of the original, then that should be considered a big enough success. Tracking has this anywhere in the $70-100 million range.
June 21 – 23
Focus Features' "The Bikeriders"
Before we get into the final weekend of June, which has a couple more notable titles, we get a bit of a breather week. “Inside Out 2” will certainly be taking a second weekend at No. 1, while The Bikeriders looks to fall somewhere in the top five. This is a smaller festival film that stars Tom Hardy, Austin Butler, and Jodie Comer, written and directed by Jeff Nichols, director of “Mud” and “Loving,” two other smaller indie films. “The Bikeriders” is about a Midwestern motorcycle club, led by Tom Hardy that goes from being a gathering place for local outsiders into a dangerous underworld of violence, forcing its newest member, played by Austin Butler, to choose between his loyalty to the club and a girl he met, played by Jodie Comer. After debuting at the festivals towards the end of last year, this was initially poised to open in December to make a potential awards run, but amidst the strikes Focus Features pushed it from the awards season to the summer movie season so that the cast could help promote it. Maybe they also read the tea leaves that this was perhaps not quite the awards player they thought it could be following and decided it might be more fit as a summer crowd-pleaser.
Not to be confused with “The Exorcist” or any of it’s sequels and remakes, the second movie to be released this weekend is The Exorcism. Exorcist-related horror movies, whether they be a part of the aforementioned movie’s franchise or not, have been coming out in a steady stream since the original movie back in 1973, so this here is nothing new. Despite the slightly generic title, the spin on this movie is that it’s about an actor playing a priest in a horror film who suddenly starts exhibiting strange behaviors. So it’s a bit meta in that regards – a horror movie about people making a horror movie wherein some sort of demonic presence exists. Now if you watch this trailer and something feels awfully familiar here, outside the general knowledge that these movies come out all the time, it might be because this stars Russell Crowe in an exorcism movie, which he literally did last year with “The Pope’s Exorcist.” And hey, if a guy likes making these types of horror films, then by all means we should let him make these horror films. In that regard, “The Pope’s Exorcist” opened to $9.0 million last April, so that’s the bar here if Crowe wants to replicate his success. That could put it in close competition with “The Bikeriders” for the top new release of the weekend.
June 28 – 30
Paramount's "A Quiet Place: Day One"
Speaking of movies that were supposed to come out, but got postponed by the strike, a common story that I have been covering, this final weekend of June at one point was the scheduled release date for the eighth Mission: Impossible film, previously titled “Dead Reckoning – Part Two,” but now currently untitled as they dropped the “Part One” and “Part Two” thing. However, unlike “Deadpool and Wolverine” that pushed back only a couple of months, Mission: Impossible 8 moved all the way to Summer 2025. So if you need another example of a dead zone left by a departing franchise film that has impacted this summer, there you are.
Taking its place in this spot is another franchise film, A Quiet Place: Day One, which continues John Krasinski’s popular A Quiet Place saga by telling the story of how the world became quiet. Both A Quiet Place movies did very well, especially for a horror genre that often comes with lower production budgets. The first movie opened to $50.2 million on a budget of $17 million and eventually went onto make $188 million domestically and $334 million worldwide. The second movie, despite opening in 2021 when the box office was still recovering, managed to duplicate those numbers, opening to $47.5 million and making $160.2 million domestically and $296 million worldwide, albeit on a slightly larger budget of $61 million, which it earned by the first movie doing as well as it did. Might this be a sign that “Day One” is a good position to be a relatively safe hit at the box office? I think there’s certainly an argument that this should do quite well. However, one might look at “Furiosa” as a slight cautionary tale. While there’s not one definitive reason as to why “Furiosa” failed, one potential explanation was the fact that it was a prequel with a different cast. And maybe that caused people to be a bit hesitant to check it out, having been burned by many prequels in the past. In that case, “Day One” is also a prequel with a different cast, so no John Krasinski or Emily Blunt. And speaking of Krasinski, while he did help write this movie, he’s also absent from the director’s chair, with Michael Sarnoski, director of the 2021 movie “Pig,” taking the helm. Maybe this won’t matter in the long run, especially since the budgets of these movies don’t require as high of a bar for success, but it will be a test to see how strong the brand of A Quiet Place is, if it can survive with a different cast and crew.
The other notable release of the weekend is also the biggest wildcard of the month and that is Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1. This is a movie that’s gotten quite a bit of buzz in certain film circles, mostly due to its unique approach. This is a Western from Kevin Costner, who wrote, directed, and stars in the film. What makes this unique is that this is a multipart film where “Chapter 1” and “Chapter 2” have both been made and are both coming out this summer. “Chapter 1” right here at the end of June and “Chapter 2” in August. Word on the street is that Costner also wants to make a “Chapter 3” and a “Chapter 4” at some point soon as well, although production hasn’t begun on those final two just yet. The first challenge here is the genre. There’s been a few Westerns here and there that have surfaced, whether it be via movie or series. And the genre certainly has its following. But the heyday of Westerns being enormously popular with the masses has long since passed and we don’t have a ton of examples of ones that have performed super well recently. On top of that, audiences will be committing to, not one but two of these movies this summer. And on top of that, “Chapter 1” debuted at the Cannes Film Festival in May and it was learned that the movie is three hours long. And given that this was written as a four-part story, that’s mostly three hours of introducing the world and all the characters. Reaction from Cannes has been understandably divisive. So how will this do with general audiences? That’s a great question. The long range forecast from Box Office Pro has this anywhere from $20-40 million for its opening. I’m inclined to think it’ll wind up on the lower end of that. But regardless, we’ll be back in a couple months to re-evaluate this project for when “Chapter 2” rolls around.
The final wide release of the weekend is a smaller one and that’s Blue Lock The Movie -Episode Nagi-, which is another anime from Crunchyroll. They’ve been rather consistent with these releases and the strategy has worked well for its niche targeted audience. “Blue Lock” is a bit unique in that it’s a sports anime, following the Japanese National Football Team, or Soccer as we say in the States. It’s based on a Manga that was first released in 2018, with the anime series debuting in Japan in 2022, running for 24 episodes. Crunchy Roll’s website describes “Episode Nagi” specifically as a prequel movie to the series. Some of these anime films have been known to surprise at the box office, so that’s always something to look out for. But the easiest comparison is to look at the most recent one that came out, that being “Haikyu!! The Dumpster Battle” opening in 1,119 theaters at the end of May and earning $3.6 million.
