If I don't share this list now, "Mad Max Fury Road" won't be on it!

A final "halfway mark" note. These are...

THE 10 BIGGEST 2015 MOVIES AT THE US BOX OFFICE (jan thru july 4th weekend)

chart via box office mojo

Imperator Furiosa by Cameron Stewart

I share this list only because I love Mad Max Fury Road so much and this is both the first moment (it just crawled over San Andreas) and the last in which it will be a 'top ten movie' for 2015... well, until critics top ten lists emerge but that's a different kind of List Olympics.

Minions, opening today, will surely kick it out of this box office giants chart in the next three days alone. Minions advertising is so oppressive that I imagine every child in the nation wants to see it and every parent has a migraine from hearing about it. (It wouldn't surprise me to hear that they spent as much on P&A as they stand to earn on opening weekend. The first film Despicable Me opened with $53 million and ended with $251 milliion. The second film Despicable Me 2 opened with $83 million and ended with $368 million. So who knows how high this one could go). Maybe it'll end up as the 3rd biggest grosser of 2015 when all is said and done since only Star Wars can will challenge Jurassic World's supremacy from the first half.

Are you like "shut up about 'they year is half over'?"
If your answer to that question is 'yes,' too bad. It is! It's been a decent year thus far in cinema but also a curiously shallow one in terms of mainstream films worth getting excited about. So many weekends have been bereft of interesting or exciting looking choice that it's kind of no wonder that Jurassic World was breaking box office records. It had no competition for like a whole month, aside from the surprise excellence of Inside Out.

Halfway There ~ Year in Review. Nine Parts
pt. 1 Oscar Acting Chart
pt. 2 10 Best Leading Performances
pt. 3 Animation from Strange Magic to Inside Out 
pt. 4 Ubiquitous Alicia Vikander 
pt. 5 Oscar Chart Updates - All Categories
pt. 6 Best Supporting Performances 
pt. 7 Top Ten List
pt. 8 Best Screen Animals  
pt. 9 Eye Candy 

Inside Jurassic XXL's Genysis

Proving difficult to recapture a surprise novelty hit audience?You guys. I'm disappointed in the American public. Here we are on a national holiday weekend and they're still going to the dinosaur island off the coast of Costa Rica and a reheated pointless Terminator reboot of much better work from the world's most successful Canadian director! And they're doing that when the All American Pixar is knocking it out of the park with a story about a Midwestern girl moving to San Francisco and Channing Tatum and friends having a road trip strippers party from Florida to South Carolina. But America wants what it wants and in this case they wanted the microwave-reheated franchises from beyond our borders. 

Early estimates had Inside Out leading but when later estimates came it it fell back into second place which means it now takes the record from My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002) of the highest grossing movie that never had a #1 weekend. And the record will hold since there's no way it hits #1 next weekend with Minions opening to steal the family dollar away.

UPDATE With actuals in My Big Fat Greek's Wedding on most successful film that was never #1 at the box office lives on, since Inside Out just barely edged out the dinosaurs.

BOX OFFICE
July 3rd-5th Weekend
(some "new" titles have cumulatives since they opened early for the holiday)
01 Inside Out $29.7 (cum. $245.8) Inside Out Articles 
02 Jurassic World $29.2 (cum. $556.5) Jurassic Articles 
03 Terminator Genisys NEW $27 (cum. $42.4)
04 Magic Mike XXL NEW $12.8 (cum. $27.8) Review
05 Ted 2 $11.1 (cum. $58.5)
06 Max $6.6 (cum. $25.3)
07 Spy $5.1 (cum. $97.5)
08 San Andreas $2.8 (cum. $147.1)
09 Me and Earl and the Dying Girl $1.2 (cum. $3.9) Michael's Review 
10 Dope $1.1 (cum. $14.1) Sundance capsule

11 Mad Max: Fury Road $1 (cum. $149) Review & Podcast & Random Articles
12 Avengers: Age of Ultron  $.8 (cum. $454.2) Review & Marathon & Podcast 
13 Love & Mercy $.7 (cum. $10.5) Best Actor
14 Pitch Perfect 2 $.5 (cum. $182.3) 
15 Insidious: Chapter 3 $.5 (cum. $51.2)
16 I'll See You In My Dreams $.4 (cum. $5.8) Best Actress

WHAT DID YOU SEE THIS WEEKEND?
Do tell. 

Box Office: Ted 2 No Match for Jurassic 4 & Inside Out 1

Weird. Despite a lot of love for Seth MacFarlane's Ted (2012) just three years ago its sequel significantly underperformed with a much weaker opening... like $21 whole million weaker. I say weird because nowadays audiences tend to run screaming with wallets wide open to anything sequelish that they liked before. Witness the explosive returns for Pitch Perfect 2 (which has tripled the gross of its predecessor... also three years old). Speaking of sequels... Jurassic World is now the biggest grosser of 2015 and its only in its 3rd weekend with a typically huge box office holiday fast approaching. The weird thing is that people don't seem to love it. They only seem to love being able to return to that park... which bodes really well for Jurassic Park-World 5,6,7, etcetera one supposes. 

Magic Mike XXL and Terminator 5 arrive Wednesday but neither are as family oriented as the current top two so the holiday week could well be huge for all four. Unless Terminator G goes the way of Ted 2 under the 'nah, been there' umbrella?

WIDE RELEASE BOX OFFICE
June 26th-28th Weekend
01 Jurassic World $54.2 (cum. $500) Jurassic Articles 
02 Inside Out $52.1 (cum. $184.9) Inside Out Articles
03 Ted 2 NEW $33
04 Max NEW $12.2
05 Spy $7.8 (cum. $88.3) Rose Byrne FYC
06 San Andreas $5.2 (cum. $141.8)
07 Dope $2.8 (cum. $11.7) Sundance capsule
08 Insidious Chapter 3 $2 (cum. $49.7)
09 Mad Max: Fury Road $1.7 (cum. $147)  Review & Podcast & Random Articles
10 Avengers: Age of Ultron  $1.6 (cum. $452.4) Review & Marathon & Podcast

Notes
Jurassic World is the first film to hit $500 million in US theaters since The Avengers (2012). The latter went on to gross $623.3 million but it took a week longer to hit the half billion mark. Jurassic World may well surpass The Avengers but I hope Avatar's $749 million US record is safe since Jurassic World would be a really lame #1 of all time since it's basically a remake. Finally, incredibly Cinderella is still in theaters, albeit only 235 of them, but in its 16th week it has now passed the $200 million mark and seems likely to end the year in the box office top ten (it's number #4 right this moment but will soon slip a rung). The fairy tale doesn't come to BluRay and DVD until September 15th.

What did you see this weekend?

Weekend Highs: Inside Emotions, Dinosaur Thrills, Prison Love

Two separate films earning over $90 million in a single weekend? Impressive. That didn't leave a ton to money to go round for other films, though. Spy is a solid performer at the box office but I'd actually expected it to be much bigger since it's the funniest film of the year. But all the action was at the dinosaur theme park and Pixar's return to form, the delightful Inside Out. The new film follows the emotions inside an 11 year old girl's head as she moves to a new city. I was resistant to the concept, which seemed too gimmicky and "Herman's Head" like, but resistance was futile: it's wonderful. Better still they didn't even remotely give the best stuff away in the trailer and that's such a surprise nowadways!

WIDE RELEASE BOX OFFICE
June 19th-21st Weekend
01 Jurassic World $102 (cum. $398.2) Jurassic Articles 
02 Inside Out NEW $91 Inside Out Articles
03 Spy $10.5 (cum. $74.3) Rose Byrne FYC
04 San Andreas $8.2 (cum. $132.2)
05 Dope NEW $6 Sundance capsule
06 Insididous Chapter 3 $4.1 (cum. $45.3)
07 Pitch Perfect 2 $3.3 (cum. $177.5) Review & Sequel
08 Mad Max: Fury Road $2.8 (cum. $143.6)  Review & Podcast & Random Articles
09 Avengers: Age of Ultron  $2.7 (cum. $451) Review & Marathon & Podcast
10 Tomorrowland $2 (cum. $87.6)  Review

The opening weekend for Dope was solid especially for a film with zero stars. It was one of the big sales at Sundance (7 million) and it nearly nabbed that back on opening weekend. Good word of mouth (which is likely - the film is very funny and likeable) could turn it into a minor hit. None of the miniscule limited releases caused a stir at the arthouse but The Overnight (also from Sundance -- why do they wait till all the heat dissipates to release those films?) took in $62,000 on 3 screens.

What did you see this weekend?
I'd already seen Inside Out so I started on the Smackdown movies -- Key Largo is so good. I hope y'all are watching along at home. I also went to a reunion concert for the original cast of Into the Woods . Let me just say that it was basically heaven on earth. I'm still high from it... and not just from the always sublime Bernadette Peters. I went in expecting more of a talk with a few musical numbers but they did several from each act. As it turns out the original Cinderella (whose voice is still ridiculously pretty) and the original Cinderella's Prince/Wolf got married in real life and they have kids now. Joanna Gleeson was still amazingly funny as the Baker's Wife,and so on.

And of course I took in a couple more episode of Orange is the New Black. I'm absolutely loving this newly low-key character-driven season. Gone are the distractions of the outside world that marred the otherwise brilliant Season 1, the absence of a focus pulling villain like season 2's Vee (Lorraine Toussaint's Emmy worthy work aside) means more focus on the complicated network of friendships and rivalries among the women in the prison and ways that they cope, or don't. I'm just loving it.

You?

Golden Oldies Rule The Box Office

Fact: People love themselves from prehistoric monster movies. 

Jurassic World (aka Jurassic Park 4) took absolutely no chances whatsoever on losing the collective global nostalgia for Steven Spielberg's original dino-blockbuster, modelling itself almost exactly on its predecessor. The only plot elements and story beats missing in this very very familiar movie are the kind you can't regurgitate: Spielberg's brilliance, Laura Dern's Face o' Wonder, and that scene with the dinosaur poop. As a result its opening weekend was big enough to fund the development of a real life theme park with ½ a billion in worldwide grosses in just 3 days. It's now the second biggest opening of all time after Marvel's The Avengers (2012). Which means that it's fairly certain that Jurassic Park 4 or Star Wars 7 will be the Crowned Champ of 2015 when the year wraps up. Sorry about it Avengers 2, Hunger Games 4, Furious 7, and Originality; you've all lost!

This way towards ridiculous grosses, you monster!

WIDE RELEASE
June 12th-14th Weekend
01 Jurassic World NEW $204.6 Jurassic Park Articles 
02 Spy $16 (cum. $56.9) Rose Byrne FYC
03 San Andreas $11 (cum. $119.3)
04 Insididous Chapter 3 $7.3 (cum. $37.3)
05 Pitch Perfect 2 $6 (cum. $170.7) Review 
06 Entourage $4.3 (cum. $25.8)
07 Mad Max: Fury Road $4.1 (cum. $138.6)  Review & Podcast & Random Articles
08 Avengers: Age of Ultron  $3.6 (cum. $444.7) Review & Marathon & Podcast
09 Tomorrowland $3.4 (cum. $83.6)  Review
10 Aloha $.9 (cum. $18.9) Review

UNDER 800 SCREENS
June 12th-14th Weekend
01 Love & Mercy 573 screens $1.7 (cum. $4.7) 
02 I'll See You In My Dreams 246 screens $.8 (cum. $2.9) 
03 Home 584 screens $.7 (cum. $119.3)
04 Furious 7 357 screens $.5 (cum. $350.7) Review
05 Far From the Madding Crowd 366 screens $.4 (cum. $10.7) Review 
06 Cinderella 270 screens $.2 (cum $199.2) Review
07 Ex Machina 194 screens $.2 (cum. $24.7) Review & Podcast & Random Articles
08 Me and Earl and the Dying Girl NEW 15 screens $.2 Review 
09 Paul Blart Mall Cop 2 234 screens $.2 (cum. $68.8)
10 Woman in Gold 198 screens $.1 (cum. $32.2)

The story in limited release was also oldies but goodies: The Beach Boys & Blythe Danner. Love & Mercy got quite an enthusiastic critical (and audience) response and Mama Paltrow continues to headline the non-story story of the summer in that her movie has received very little press but has somehow found an audience anyway and steadily accumulated a very nice little gross for a septugenarian romantic drama. Do you think Bleecker Street will have the guts to fund her an Oscar campaign? 

What did you see this weekend?
I saw the dinosaurs (guilty), finished up Sense8, and wisely decided not to binge Orange is the New Black but to truly savor it this time. I'm savoring my visitation privileges with these convicts this year for as long as I can manage will-power wise. Maybe I can make it last through Mid July?!?