Numbers have begun rolling in for this mid-summer weekend and as expected Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is looking to drop the 60% we predicted on Thursday. If that number holds it would be about a 5% steeper decline than 2008’s Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, which may not sound like much until you consider that Skull opened with over $100 million (or $126.9 million when you account for its 4-day Memorial Day gross.) So when Crystal Skull dropped to number 2 in its second week to the ladies of Sex and the City, it was still able to manage over $44 million, Dial of Destiny will be lucky to see $28 million in its second week.
If there is a glimmer of hope for Indy to maintain its pole position it is that horror films tend to be very front loaded and because of that, Insidious: The Red Door may win the Friday box office battle but lose the weekend box office war when more families head to theaters to check out Indiana Jones throughout the weekend.
Right now the Patrick Wilson directed Insidious: The Red Door is tracking to do around $31 million based off of a franchise best $5 million in Thursday previews rolled into a $15.2 million Friday. So even if this film opens in second place (it won’t, it will win the weekend) that is still a tremendous opening weekend for a film with a budget of just $16 million and even more so for a fifth film in a horror franchise. I don’t recall Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist, Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers, Friday The 13th: A New Beginning or A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child pulling in these kinds of numbers! Of course the tagline for this latest installment of the franchise is “It Ends Where It All Began” hinting that this is the final film in this storyline, fans of the franchise must not fret as the spin off film: Thread: An Insidious Tale is already in development with Mandy Moore and Kumail Nanjiani set to star.
Third place looks to be the independent film Sound of Freedom with an estimated weekend of $15 million. The based on a true story which tackles the heavy subject of child sex trafficking hails from the company Angel Studios and is certainly drawing on its faith based audience who tend to show up to theaters when a film targeted at them like this is released, and with a 99% audience score, it would seem those audience members are enjoying what they are seeing.
Fourth and fifth is now a musical chairs act between Elemental (4th) and Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse (5th) as it appears the Pixar film will finally finish atop the web slinger with an estimated $8.5 million against Spider-Man’s $7.5 million. Of course Spider-Man currently has about $250 million more than Elemental at the domestic box office, but that is still pretty good news for a film that had the second worst opening in the history of the studio.
Falling out the top five is Joy Ride, the new R rated comedy from first time director Adele Lim (who co-penned 2018’s hit Crazy Rich Asians) with what is looking like a sub $6 million opening. The film has garnered strong reviews (currently at a 90% on Rotten Tomatoes) while audiences look to be steering clear. Sadly, I have to agree with the audience on this one as the film felt like it was trying way to hard to be funny that it forgot to actually be funny (you can check out my full review here.)
Of course this weekend is just the calm before the storm as next week sees the release of the highly anticipated (and already critically lauded) Mission: Impossible- Dead Reckoning Part 1, which is tracking to have a franchise best opening, followed by what is being dubbed Barbenheimer as both Barbie and Oppenheimer open the following week with solid box office numbers expected for both.
What do you think about Indiana Jones’ sharp second week decline? Was it to be expected or did you hope to see a bigger turn out for Indy’s final adventure? Let us know in the comments and don’t forget to check back tomorrow when we have a full run down of this week’s box office numbers.