Pixar’s films may be having a rough go at it with critics, but audiences turned out in droves to catch their latest as Monsters University scored $82 million domestically and another $54.5 million internationally for an opening, worldwide cume of $136.5 million. Add to that the “A” CinemaScore from opening night audiences and it should enjoy a tidy sum over the next week-and-a-half, before Universal begins making its own animated waves on July 2 with Despicable Me 2.
The opening is the second highest opening for a Pixar film ever, behind Toy Story 3‘s $110.3 million in 2010 and ahead of the $70+ million earned by both Finding Nemo and The Incredibles. In 2001, Monsters, Inc. managed $62.5 million, which if you adjust for inflation equals approximately $87.7 million so it would seem University didn’t perform half-bad even by those standards.
However, even with the success of Monsters, Paramount is doing whatever they can to dominate the weekend headlines as they sent out a press release on Saturday announcing World War Z was on track to be Brad Pitt‘s highest opening film ever. Pitt’s previous highest opening was the Angelina Jolie co-starrer Mr. & Mrs. Smith in 2005, which opened to $50.3 million. Adjusted for inflation that Mr. & Mrs. Smith number hovers around $62 million, which means even by those standards the $66 million World War Z brought in this weekend is a huge score.
Overseas the zombie feature brought in $45.8 million bringing its worldwide opening total to $111.8 million. Not too bad for a film with so much negative chatter headed into its opening, but with a budget just shy of $200 million I’m not sure the “B+” CinemaScore is going to be enough to consider the film much, if any kind, of a hit.
Meanwhile, last weekend’s #1 film, Man of Steel, dropped 65% from its $116.6 million opening to only $41.2 million this weekend. With a $225 million budget and a current domestic cume of $210 million, Warner Bros. is going to need some serious international participation and one hell of a script to warrant Man of Steel 2. Maybe Superman is best left in the comics and cartoons and not on the big screen.
Next weekend sees the release of Roland Emmerich’s White House Down starring Channing Tatum and Jamie Foxx and The Heat with Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy, which may be a perfectly timed female comedy. We’ll be taking predictions on those next weekend, plus a couple more options, but more on that next Thursday, for now…
Finally, looking over the predictions from our first weekend of the new RopeofSilicon Box Office Challenge it looks like we will be looking at the actual results pretty hard once they arrive. Remember, the results below are just preliminary as points will only be awarded once actual results are in on Monday afternoon. For now, however, here is the complete top ten followed by prediction results for the four movies in this weekend’s competition.
