Cinema is dead, they said. People just don’t go to the movies anymore. It’s all about staying home and watching things on streaming nowadays. Especially not family audiences. Why spend all that money to take your kids to the theater now when you can just watch the latest from Disney or Pixar later on Disney+ for just the cost of your monthly subscription?
Well, those were the conversations of last month after a pretty miserable May. Fast forward one month and it’s funny how quiet those people are at the moment. Now that’s not to say that everything is back to the way it was pre-COVID. Times are definitely different nowadays and I think that’s something we just have to accept. And that’s fine. Things are always changing in life. But it now appears in hindsight that the problems with the month of May were simply the individual movies that were on the schedule and not a problem with the industry as a whole. Because, if you haven’t heard, “Inside Out 2” absolutely exploded with a $154.2 million opening weekend domestically, the second highest opening ever for an animated movie, behind only “Incredibles 2” ($182.7 million). Since that open, in three weeks it has already gone on to make $1 billion worldwide, the fastest animated movie to do so. And it wasn’t just that movie that had success. “Inside Out 2” was bookended on the month by $50 million openings from “Bad Boys: Ride or Die” and “A Quiet Place: Day One,” both of which opened on par with previous entries in their respective franchises and above expectations.
And the fun part of all of this is that the success is looking to keep rolling into July. Even before June surprised in a big way, July was always expected to be the biggest month of the summer. Granted, nothing is a guarantee these days, but when you have one of today’s most bankable animated franchises returning to the schedule, paired with everyone’s favorite foul-mouthed superhero, things are looking pretty good. So let’s dive in and explore the possibilities here.
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.
July 3 – 7
Universal's "Despicable Me 4"
As we’re nearing towards the end of the extended 4th of July weekend, there’s been plenty of options to see, with staggered releases throughout the week. Not only are people still seeing “Inside Out 2” and “A Quiet Place: Day One” over the holiday, but we have four new releases and a prominent expansion. Leading the way through all of this is the long-awaited Despicable Me 4. Well, long-awaited for some people, anyways. The minions are certainly quite divisive these days, but the kids still love them. This is the sixth movie overall in this franchise, with now four main “Despicable” movies and two Minions spin-offs. While the first movie was more of a sleeper hit that grew over time, the four movies after that were all mega hits, averaging a worldwide total of $1.026 billion, which is why I mentioned earlier that this has become one of the most bankable franchises, two movies crossing that $1 billion mark and two movies coming awfully close. So with it having been seven years since “Despicable Me 3,” having the full gang together again, going on another mischievous mission of sorts, could be seen as quite the event for certain family audiences after 2022’s “Minions: The Rise of Gru” proved that this franchise still is quite popular. And the advertising has done a solid job of promising plenty of Minions shenanigans in the midst of the return of adult Gru and his family.
The trick here, of course, is seeing what will happen here with the major breakout of “Inside Out 2.” Will Pixar’s huge success steal some of the thunder away from Illumination or will the new animated movie cause the one from last month to slow down a tad bit? Or will it be a miserable summer for parents’ bank accounts as a whole with both movies doing excellent business? “Despicable Me 4” is off to a solid start as it’s looking at a 5-day start in the range of $120-130 million. It’s 3-day opening is looking to be in the range of $75-80 million. Compared to last month’s “Inside Out 2” that doesn’t look super great. But the 3-day openings for the second and third “Despicable Me” movies were $84.2 million and 72.4 million, respectively, and as noted those two movies did just fine in the end.
There are a handful of other movies opening, although much smaller in comparison. In direct contrast to the big family sequel, the adult audience also gets a highly anticipated sequel with Ti West’s MaXXXine. This is third movie in Ti West’s horror trilogy, following “X” and “Pearl,” both of which were released in 2022. “X” is a movie about a group of young adults who go to a rural farm to shoot an adult film, only to get terrorized by a crazy, old woman named Pearl. The next movie, “Pearl,” is a prequel to “X” and is the origin story for the character of Pearl, showing how she became this crazy, psychotic killer. And now “MaXXXine” is the direct sequel to “X,” taking place in 1985, as “X” was set in 1979. In “X,” Mia Goth played both the lead female Maxine Minx and the old lady Pearl. She’ll be back playing at least one of those characters in “MaXXXine” (no spoilers here). Now this trilogy hasn’t quite broken out in the mainstream as both “X” and “Pearl” made just around $10 million domestically, but it’s been quite the buzzy trilogy among some niche film fans, which should lead this new movie to be the biggest of the three. “X” opened to $4.3 million, while “Pearl” opened to $3.1 million. “MaXXXine” in its opening day, which was Friday, opened to $3.2 million, which means it could open in the $8-10 million range for the weekend as a whole, depending on how well it holds and Saturday and Sunday. Either way, its opening weekend could wind up coming close to the previous two movies’ final totals, which would be saying something.
The third major wide release of the weekend comes from Angel Studios with their latest movie, Sound of Hope: The Story of Possom Trot. While “Despicable Me 4” opened on Wednesday and “MaXXXine” opened on Friday, “Sound of Hope” opened right between the two on Thursday, meaning each of the three new movies this weekend had their own opening day. “Sound of Hope” is inspired by the true story of Donna and Reverend Martin from Possom Trot, Texas, as they opened their hearts to foster care children that no one else would take in. The result led to them adopting 77 children. Filming for the movie reportedly took place back in the fall of 2022. Distribution rights were purchased by Angel Studios in February 2024, after which they added “Sound of Hope” to the title, which seems like an obvious attempt to connect the movie to “Sound of Freedom” in a way, which has been Angel Studio’s biggest financial success in the movie realm. Although Angel Studios would love to see something else have the success of “Sound of Freedom,” this latest release is still looking more like it will follow the likes of “Cabrini” and “The Shift,” which opened to $7.2 million and $4.3 million, respectively.
While that concludes the major wide releases (“MaXXXine” and “Sound of Hope” are both opening in over 2,000 theaters, with “Despicable Me 4” opening in over 4,000 theaters), opening in a moderate amount of theaters is the movie Kill, which opened on Thursday in 828 theaters to be exact. This is an Indian film, in the Hindi language, and is about a pair of commandos facing an army of invading bandits during a train trip to New Delhi. Indian cinema has actually done quite well over here in America as a lot of these show up in a moderate amount of theaters and have a decent per theater average. “Kill” opened in 11th place on Thursday with $165,638 and will hope to sneak into the top 10 by the end of the weekend.
Finally, while not a new release, Yorgos Lanthimos latest movie Kinds of Kindness will be more widely available as it expands from 490 theaters to 920 theaters this weekend. It opened in limited release in June and has been slowly expanding in the weekends since as it builds more buzz. Yorgos is quite the unique filmmaker with a very specific style that is certainly not for everyone, but his previous two movies, “The Favourite” and “Poor Things” were both showered with Oscar nominations, so he’s certainly becoming more recognized, even if “mainstream” is probably not a thing he’ll ever care about. “Kinds of Kindness” is another bizarre, off-kilter Yorgos film that will shock some and garner praise from others who know his style. The plot is essentially three smaller movies in one, following a man seeking to break free from his predetermined path, a police officer questioning his wife’s demeanor after her return from a supposed drowning, and a woman searching form an extraordinary individual prophesied to become her spiritual guide. There are many humans starring in this movie, but Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons are the headline acts.
July 12 – 14
Sony's "Fly Me to the Moon"
After that busy holiday weekend, the second weekend of July is more of a cool down week before the final two weekends give us two more blockbusters. “Despicable Me 4” will take a second weekend at No. 1 here, but the top new release will be the comedy Fly Me to the Moon, which looks to be a bit of a satirical take on the moon landing. I’m sure most people are aware of the conspiracy theories that the moon landing was faked and that seems to be what this movie is having fun with. The setting is the 1960s and the goal is to get man on the moon, but when certain government people deem this mission too important to fail, other people are hired to direct a staged fake moon landing as a backup. In the midst of this are characters played by Channing Tatum and Scarlett Johansson, which give this movie its romance angle. There are also a lot of other humans in this movie, like Ray Romano and Woody Harrelson, so it has a bit of a stacked cast. And the advertising has been pushing it decently well. But the big question will be whether it can capture enough attention from audiences or if they’ll instead choose to save their money for the next two weekends.
The other movie that is theoretically sneaking into a few theaters in the sci-fi horror film Lumina. This has not had much of an advertising campaign and comes from a distributor in Goldove that has not yet released anything. But the Goldove YouTube channel has put out a few low qualities trailers in the past few weeks, one of which being a testimonial video from people who claimed to have been abducted by aliens who are definitely “not actors.” Anyways, the movie is certainly fictional and is an alien abduction horror film, written and directed by Gino McKoy in his feature-length directorial debut. I clearly have lots of faith in this, as you can see. Yes, that’s sarcasm. But the-numbers has it listed as a wide release, so I feel obligated to include it.
Another horror movie that I definitely know is real is Longlegs. I listened to a podcast from a guy who saw an early screening of this and called it the best serial killer horror film since “Silence of the Lambs.” Making that claim (this was Joey Magidson from Awards Radar) got him a spot on one of the posters advertising this movie. Anyways, the movie stars Nicolas Cage playing a serial killer who is referred to by the name Longlegs and Maika Monroe as a young female FBI agent who gets assigned to his case. No, this is not based on a true story, but I’m sure it’s inspired by similar cases of Satanic serial killers from the 80’s and 90’s. Being compared to movies like “Zodiac,” “Se7en,” and “Silence of the Lambs” will surely get it some attention, especially if more reviews continue to give it such high praise, but NEON is giving this a limited release this weekend and I’m sure that will lead to an expansion in the weeks following.
July 19 – 21
Universal's "Twisters"
The biggest movie even of the month comes in the final weekend of July, but before we get to that, perhaps the biggest wild card of the month and the summer comes here in the third weekend with the release of Twisters. This movie is a sequel to the 1996 mega blockbuster “Twister,” which made $241.7 million domestically that year, which was the second highest grossing movie of 1996, behind only “Independence Day.” Adjusted for ticket price inflation, the-numbers claims that is the equivalent of $589.5 million in 2024 ticket pricing. So yeah, think of something like “Barbie” or “Top Gun: Maverick” in modern era and that was “Twister” back in 1996. People loved their tornado and disaster movies in the 90s. But is that something that can be replicated today or is it just an isolated 90s phenomenon? There have been disaster movies released in the modern era, but nothing remotely on the level of “Twister” in 1996 in regards to the box office. Speaking of the only movie in 1996 that beat “Twister,” there was an eventual sequel to “Independence Day” in 2016 with “Independence Day: Resurgence.” It opened decently with $41 million, but quickly disappeared with rather sour, toxic reviews as it wasn’t able to capture 90s nostalgia. Will “Twisters” suffer the same fate or will it a bonafide hit? Box Office Pro in their long range forecast is giving it a range of $65-85 million for its opening weekend, which would definitely be a massive success. But critical and audience reaction will be the key to seeing if people are up for watching tornado disaster movies in 2024.
Filling in the gaps in theaters is another smaller horror film being released, this one being Oddity, which is another real horror film that you could see in theaters near you. This one was released back in March at the South by Southwest Film Festival to very positive reaction. Now festivals crowds and general audience crowds can often give two quite different reactions to movies, especially in the horror genre, but “Oddity” does currently hold a 100 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes through its first 18 reviews. This is a movie about a girl named Darcy who is trying to uncover the truth behind her sister’s murder from a year prior. People initially suspected a patient from a local mental hospital, but then that patient also wound up dead. Darcy is a psychic and a collector of cursed objects and pays a visit to a guy named Ted, who was a doctor at the local mental hospital, claiming there is more to her sister’s murder than others are giving credit. Again, this might be a question of exactly how big this release is. This one is listed as a wide release by the-numbers, but it could end up as a smaller release that expands. Either way, it’ll find its audience if the reviews continue to be positive.
July 26 – 28
Marvel's "Deadpool & Wolverine"
And now for the big event of the month. And maybe the year? That’s, of course, the release of Deadpool & Wolverine. The first Deadpool movie in 2016 completely changed the game when it proved that R-rated superhero movies CAN make money. Prior to that, both Marvel and DC strictly stuck to a PG-13 rating with their highest profile releases because there was the thought that you couldn’t do well with the R rating in this genre and there were a few prior examples of movies that showed that. Turns out that if you make a movie that people like that does justice to a character that they love, people will show up. It’s not a guarantee that it’ll make money, but it shows that the possibility exists with the right cast and crew. So yeah, a $132.4 million opening for “Deadpool” was a huge deal. It’s still the highest opening weekend for an R-rated movie. Two years later, “Deadpool 2” came close to matching it with an opening of $125.5 million, proving the first movie was no fluke. But as you may have been well aware of, between 2018 and 2024, there’s been lots of drama on the superhero front, namely Deadpool’s studio Fox got bought by Disney and now Deadpool has the opportunity to enter the Marvel Cinematic Universe. And not just that, but Marvel themselves have been having a really rough time, to say the least. So not only does Deadpool get to enter the MCU, but he’s aiming to be, as he says in the trailers, “Marvel Jesus.” A massive win here with the third Deadpool movie could do wonders for Disney and Marvel, like “Inside Out 2” just did with Pixar. After a very miserable 2023, Disney would love to have another massive win in the summer of 2024.
But how high can “Deadpool & Wolverine” actually fly? Well, as the title suggests, it’s not just Deadpool here. But he’s dragging Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine with him. And give the nature of Deadpool as a fourth-wall breaking comedy, there’s lot to poke fun at here and lots of potential surprises to be had. If you didn’t hear, there was a post credits scene that introduced the X-Men into the MCU and this would be the perfect opportunity to introduce more. Are there more surprises awaiting? I don’t know. I don’t want the surprised spoiled. But I hear there are. And all this combined has people very excited. And it has professional box office prognosticators saying this is going to be very huge. Like, a $200+ million opening weekend type of huge. Some have thrown “Spider-Man: No Way Home” and its $260 million opening into the conversation. I’m not personally predicting that. I’m just relaying what I’ve heard. Box Office Pro has it listed as $175-200 million for the weekend in their long range forecast and maybe it’s also worth pointing to “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness,” which opened to $187.4 million in 2022. Realistically, anything in the range of $120-130 million, which the first two did, is a win. Especially considering the rating. But signs are pointing to it blowing those two movies away. Just remember, parents. This is still rated R. Just because it’s the MCU, doesn’t mean you can take your kids. Don’t get mad at the movie for you not paying enough attention.
Oh. There are two other movies this weekend, hoping for a bit of counter-programming. The Fabulous Four is a comedy that stars Susan Sarandon, Bette Midler, Megan Mullany, and Sheryl Lee Ralph as four friends, three of which are traveling together to be bridesmaids at a surprise wedding for their fourth friend. It seems like a comedy aimed a more adult audience. We’ve seen a handful of movies like this recently in the vein of something like “Book Club,” a group of slightly older ladies going on certain adventures. This could be decent counter-programming for an older crowd not interested in superhero shenanigans.
And as another option for people not interested in superheroes, or wanting to see something else after they have already seen Deadpool, is the movie Didi. This is an independent film out of Sundance this year that also played at South by Southwest and a handful of other smaller festivals. The movie is about a 13-year-old Taiwanese American boy in the summer before high school begins learning how to do things his family can’t teach him in this coming-of-age comedy/drama. This did get great reactions out of its festival run and currently has a 91 percent from 35 theaters. I don’t imagine it’ll make more than a few million this weekend, but it could be a thing that catches on in certain niche film groups.
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