Box Office: 'Nope' Flies while 'Marcel' Takes His Sweet Time
Monday, July 25, 2022 at 7:36PM by Nathaniel R
Once again Jordan Peele proves he's one of the rare celebrities who is bankable behind the camera. His third film as a director brings him a third #1 finish, as Nope nabs the biggest original film opening weekend since... Peele's own previous hit Us (2019) opened to $71 million. Any win for original filmmaking feels so good, doesn't it? More after the jump...
| Weekend Box Office (Estimates) July 22nd-24th 🔺 = new or expanding / ★ = Recommended links if we've written about it |
|
| WIDE (OVER 800 SCREENS) | PLATFORM RELEASES |
 NOPE |
 FIRE OF LOVE |
| 1 ★🔺 NOPE $44.3 *NEW* |
1 🔺 MARCEL THE SHELL WITH SHOES ON $874k (cum. $2.9) |
| 2 THOR: LOVE & THUNDER $22.5 (cum. $276.6) |
2 ★🔺 FIRE OF LOVE [DOC] $133k (cum. $283k) |
| 3 MINIONS: THE RISE OF GRU $18 (cum. $298.1) |
3 ★ EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE $94k (cum. $68.1) |
| 4 WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING $10.3 (cum. $38.3) |
4 🔺 HALLELUJAH LEONARD COHEN... [DOC] $64k (cum. $226k) |
| 5 ★ TOP GUN MAVERICK $10.2 (cum. $635.8) | 5 🔺 MY DONKEY, MY LOVER, AND I (France) $30k *NEW* |
|
6★ ELVIS $6.5 (cum. $118.6) |
6 FIRE (France) $15k (cum. $108k) |
| 7 PAWS OF FURY $3.8 (cum. $13.7) |
7 ★ MAD GOD $13k (cum. $261k) |
| 8 THE BLACKPHONE $3.5 (cum. $78.6) |
8 THE KILLER (South Korea) $130k (cum. $123k) |
| 9 JURASSIC WORLD DOMINION $3.1 (cum. $365.6) | 9 ★ OFFICIAL COMPETITION (Spain) $11k (cum. $558k) |
| 10 ★ MRS HARRIS GOES TO PARIS $1.4 (cum. $4.7) | 10 ★ GABBY GIFFORDS WON'T BACK DOWN [Doc] $11k (cum. $134k) |
| 11 LIGHTYEAR $713k (cum. $117.1) | 11 PHANTOM OF THE OPEN (UK) $7k (cum. $705k) |
WIDE RELEASE NOTES
Speaking of 2019... For the first time that we know of we have the same amount of movies in wide release as we did in pre-pandemic times with 11 films easy to access for the general public and the same number in the equivalent weekend three years back. Of course in 2019 the wide releases combined gross around $254 million and this weekend around $122 so moviegoing still isn't quite what it used to be. That said the numbers for 2019 were skewed by the debut of the all CG The Lion King which was in more theaters than anything is now (and with no Disney+ free at home option looming just one month and change away). It earned more that weekend than all of 2022's wide releases combined this past weekend. People's tolerance for watching Disney regurgitating their own stuff will always be alarming though perhaps that was the peak of it since that version of The Lion King made $1.6 billion globally despite being criticized as a nearly shot-for-shot remake of the 2D animated classic without any of the profits going back to the original artists who created the template for all the visuals. How Disney+ will ever be able to earn as much as Disney did on the regular with most of their big ticket releases crossing the 1 billion mark in theaters before ancilliary markets we'll never know but Disney put all but their Marvel eggs in that basket now with those tight windows for theatrical.
As for the current releases...
Minions The Rise of Gru is almost at $300 which is really something when you consider that none of the other animated releases this year got anywhere close to that. Number two is Lightyear at just $117 (and a flop by Pixar standards)
Top Gun Maverick has crossed the billion dollar globally, only the second film after the COVID-19 pandemic hit to do that, the other being Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021). It is also still demonstrating crazy-good legs dropping only 18% in its 9th weekend. Both films were conceived, marinated, and received in heavy nostalgia mode so expect more of that from blockbusters (not that they aren't already leaning heavily in that diretion).
BIG QUESTION: which non-franchise blockbuster from the 80s or 90s will suddenly get an unexpected 30 years later sequel greenlit in Maverick's wake? Hollywood loves to chase a monster success with something similar.
LIMITED RELEASE NOTES
My Old School, reviewed at Sundance also opened this weekend, albeit at just one theater. It's an experimental docabout a boy who was not what he seemed in a Scottish boarding school. Alan Cumming lipsynchs to the voice of the film's subject Brandon Lee, retelling his story.
Slow and steady has won the race for Marcel the Shell with Shoes On. It's been steadily expanding every week and holding its audience. It basically tripled its screen count this weekend and is now at almost 600 screens and nearing a $3 million haul. How much of an audience is there for it out there? We shall see.
NEXT WEEKEND
The new animated feature DC League of Super Pets opens and hopes to kick Nope out of the top spot. Other new titles next week include BJ Novak's thriller Vengeance (reviewed at Tribeca), an Oscar qualifying run for the Ron Howard cave rescue drama true story Thirteen Lives (before a quick jump to Amazon Prime), and three buzzy festival titles hit regular theaters: Lena Dunham's Sharp Stick (reviewed), the Dale Dicky/Wes Studi romantic drama A Love Song (reviewed), and another Rebecca Hall tour-de-force in the creepy psychological horror flick Resurrection (reviewed).
What did you see these past few days?
A big 'here we are now, entertain us!' weekend. We took in Nope of course (and loved it), caught both The Sea Beast and Persuasion on Netflix, as well as the werewolf film The Cursed which is new to Hulu. Finally we attended a free concert in Brooklyn (pictured left): John Cameron Mitchell and Amber Martin's "Cassette Roulette" which was... incredible. They sang three songs from Hedwig and the Angry Inch among other classics of pop, rock, country, and showtunes. More on that later if you're interested.
Jordan Peele, Nope, box office, moviegoing
Reader Comments (9)
I saw Elvis, and feel pretty good about it. It definitely steadies itself after a rough first hour... and I have no idea why Luhrmann felt it should be told from Col Parker's perspective.
But it's a lot of fun and everyone should see it.
ELVIS going to reach $130m is impressive, too! Baz, like Jordan, gets people in. I wonder what the third of his American trilogy will be. Something Broadway? However, I did read that as NOPE didn't open to over $50m, the studio can enact their deal with exhibitors and release it on VDOD in just three weeks.
The Last Movie Stars on HBO. My gawd, it’s fascinating. I must immediately begin a Joanne Woodward deep dive. She and Paul Newman are so beautiful, it’s hard to look away from the screen. Have to agree with the critics that only another movie star with the passion for and knowledge of Hollywood and film history and the craft of acting could produce such a love letter as this. Well done, Ethan Hawke.
After this and The Bear, I don’t care if I watch anything else on television for the rest of the year.
(Recovering from Covid, I did also see forgettable Marry Me and Persuasion.)
... nothing new BUT I resisted As Good As It Gets after 15 years ... and I was so surprised how much I adored Helen Hunts performance - its a little masterpiece in dry wit, humanness layered with so so much love, sadness, hope and depth - I absolutely dived into this beautiful movie & script !! And it did not age !
Well deserved - and so rare for an actress to score for a comedy !!!
... and Jack and the rest of the cast of course - Still think I would have given his boy to Matt Damon back then in respective that he to today never scored ;-)
I saw Nope and liked it. I want to see it again, as I missed some of the connections and plot rationale the first time through.
I like Keke Palmer, but for me she was a weak link here. She looked like she was just doing what the director told her and that was enough. Now I show physical exertion, now frustration, now fear, now how cool I am.
All the other actors created characters specific to this particular movie, but Palmer gives standard responses where she could be in any generic horror movie. I never believed for a moment that she had grown up around horses and loved them, or that she knew anything about business, motorcycles, or stunt work.
Palmer is an actress of energy, charisma, and personality. I was just disappointed that that was the level she chose to stay on.
But when I see the movie for a second time, and understand the whole of it better, I’ll probably have a different outlook.
I found Nope to be disappointing. It's hard to overlook all the plot holes.
People should see Marcel the Shell with Shoes On. It's terrific.
The Scandinavian Film Festival started this week here, and so I saw two Swdish films - COMEDY QUEEN (really good, in the CODA wheelhouse, and would be a solid contender for International Film) and TUESDAY CLUB (really bad, and this female midlife crisis film has really been done to death in recent times).
Also did THOR: LOVE AND THUNDER (a silly bit of fun), FIRESTARTER (not as bad as people have made it out to be), JURASSIC WORLD: DOMINION (much worse than people have made it out the be. The crappiest film in the whole franchise) and KURT VONNEGUT: UNSTUCK IN TIME (a great documentary with a meta component. Is it eligible for the 2022 Oscars?)
Re: “Nope”’s Eadward Muybridge clip of the black jockey (1887?)
I read that almost all jockeys in the early days of US racing were black, because it was considered a servant role, part of the sequence of cleaning the stables, caring for the horses, riding the horses in races.
When the races acquired more money and prestige, black jockeys were disallowed. In subsequent years, some African-American jockeys pretended to be from South America, or some other nationality, to be allowed to race.
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