Weekend Box Office: Insidious beats Indy with $32.6 Million

As one franchise’s final adventure craters, another thrives as Insidious: The Red Door opened to a healthy $32.6 million knocking Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny off its perch to second place with just $26.5 million, representing a 56% decline.

Let’s start with the good, Insidious: The Red Door flew past expectations (including our own) to achieve the second best opening weekend in the franchise’s history (after insidious: Chapter 2’s opening of $40.2 million). Not just that, but now star Patrick Wilson can claim a number one finish for his directorial debut, something not all directors can do. What’s even more impressive is that this is the fifth film in a horror franchise proving Insidious is immune to the law of diminishing returns. To add even more praise to the film and its box office: the budget was a modest $16 million, meaning that in just its opening weekend it managed to nearly double that budget, more than likely covering its marketing costs and the remainder of its box office take should be pure profit. All of this in spite of the films lackluster reviews (currently at 37% on Rotten Tomatoes) although our own Tyler Nichols found enough to enjoy in his 7/10 review for the film.

That is a far cry from the film it took down as Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny has dropped to second place with an estimated $26.5 million and a cumulative domestic total of just $121.2 million. That number may seem like a lot, but with a budget rumored to be near the $300 million mark before marketing, those numbers are horrible. That is a shame because Indiana Jones has been one of the most enduring franchises in movie history and to see him go out like this is a bummer. 

Third place will belong to Sound of Freedom with an estimated $18.2 million. Add that number to the amount it took in earlier in the week when it actually beat Indiana Jones at the July 4 box office and you have a cumulative domestic total of $40.2 million… nearly three times its reported budget of $14.5 million. If anything this summer is proving that low budgets will yield solid returns while big budgets will crash and burn. 

Coming in fourth place is Elemental with $9.6 million.The animated film has ridden a wave of great word of mouth to have a slow rise at the box office with relatively small decreases each week (this week the film lost just 21% of its audience.) Of course this is another case of a great story being ruined when you realize the budget on this latest Pixar adventure was around $200 million, so despite those slow gains week to week, the film will probably fail to hit profitability anytime soon.

The same can’t be said for our fifth place finisher, Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse as that film has amassed a massive $357.6 million domestic total (including the $8 million made this weekend) while its worldwide total nears the $650 million mark. All of that on just a $100 million budget, which is a lot, but the film has what a lot of those other mega budgeted movies don’t have: that money is all up there on the screen and the audiences are rewarding that with multiple visits to theaters.

Finishing just outside the top five is the new R rated comedy Joy Ride with an estimated $5.8 million. Sadly, this film just did not seem to catch on with audiences, despite its solid reviews (currently 91% on Rotten Tomatoes.) I will say that I think audiences got it right by steering clear of this one. R rated comedies should have humor that adds to the story and isn’t just thrown at the audience for shock value alone, that is where this movie missed the mark: it tried to be funny but never actually was (you can check out my full review here.) That is a shame because the cast and crew are all incredibly talented people with the films director Adele Lim co-writing the excellent Crazy Rich Asians and the films co-writer Teresa Hsiao co-creating the absolutely hilarious Comedy Central show Awkwafina is Nora From Queens. If there is a silver lining it is that the film carries a relatively small budget so perhaps one day it may see a bit of profit.

If that hard R rated movie missed the mark for me, our seventh place finisher was actually one I really enjoyed as No Hard Feelings grossed an estimated $5.2 million this weekend, That number continues the slow build this Jennifer Lawrence fronted film has seen over the past few weeks. For me, what this movie got right that Joy Ride didn’t was the simple fact that the comedy didn’t feel like a series of “what can we do now to really shock the audience” set pieces but rather “what can we do now to add to the story in a humorous way.”

The remainder of the top ten are your holdover titles such as Transformers: Rise of the Beasts with $5 million while Disney’s live action The Little Mermaid continues its strong domestic run with an additional $3.5 million added to its $289 million total. Coming in the ten spot is Ruby Gillman: Teenage Kraken with just $2.8 million for a domestic total of $11.5 million against a budget of $70 million. 

Did you make it to theaters this weekend or are you waiting for the rise of Barbenheimer? Let us know in the comments and don’t forget to take our weekly poll where we ask: What is your favorite Patrick Wilson Film?