A Monster opening!
Pixar took a look back at the education of MONSTERS, INC.'s top scarers, and audiences were more than happy to attend class with Mike and Sully, putting MONSTERS UNIVERSITY at the top of a busy box office weekend with $82 million!
That marks the second-biggest opening for a Pixar movie, behind TOY STORY 3's whopping $110.3 million first weekend in June 2010. Crowds definitely thought the MONSTERS prequel made the grade, giving it a straight 'A' CinemaScore.
It's certainly a better report card than Pixar's summer release last year — BRAVE started out with $66.3 million (and went on to $237.2 million). The original MONSTERS, INC. opened way back in November 2001 with $62.5 million and ended up with $255.8 million.
In second place was WORLD WAR Z, which overcame its troubled production to debut with a solid $66 million. The viral apocalypse thriller (loosely based on Max Brooks' novel) is the biggest box office opening for a zombie movie, and also the biggest weekend for star Brad Pitt, behind the $50.3 million opening of 2005's MR. & MRS. SMITH.
WWZ has also chewed up an additional $46 million from international crowds so far. Audiences gave the globetrotting undead disaster movie a 'B+' CinemaScore — and with an eventual price tag north of $200M, it will need some positive word-of-mouth to carry it further into the summer.
Last week's box office champion MAN OF STEEL wasn't quite as bulletproof as his reputation, coming in third with $41.2 million — almost a 65% drop from Kal-El's heroic $125M opening. Still, the latest iteration of Superman is already up to an impressive 10-day total of $210 million (plus another $135M from overseas). For DC Comics characters on the big screen, MAN OF STEEL isn't shaping up to be a Batman-sized success, but it's stomping every imaginable color out of GREEN LANTERN (which only ended up with $116.6M domestic).
Seth Rogen and friends seem to still have audiences enjoying their catastrophic predicament in THIS IS THE END, placing fourth with another $13 million. The crafty magicians of NOW YOU SEE ME are slowly looting their way to the $100 million mark, and FAST & FURIOUS 6 is still chugging along (it's the biggest entry in the franchise, both domestically and internationally).
THE INTERNSHIP and THE PURGE continue to drop, STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS is up to $430M worldwide (besting STAR TREK's $385.7M global total), and IRON MAN 3 still hovers inside the Top 10 a full two months after Tony Stark's armored alter-ego first arrived in theaters.
Outside the chart, we bid farewell to AFTER EARTH and EPIC (which just crossed $100M), Ethan Hawke's BEFORE MIDNIGHT is now up to $4.6 million, and director Sofia Coppola's THE BLING RING expanded to 650 screens and made an additional $2 million.
Next weekend has agent Channing Tatum protecting President Jamie Foxx in director Roland Emmerich's WHITE HOUSE DOWN, Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy fight crime in THE HEAT, and vampires come to limited release in BYZANTIUM, along with Jason Statham's latest actioner REDEMPTION (aka HUMMINGBIRD), also available on VOD the same day.
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| # | MOVIE TITLE | WKND $ | TOTAL $ |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Monsters University | $82 M | NEW |
| 2 | World War Z | $66 M | NEW |
| 3 | Man of Steel | $41.2 M | $210 M |
| 4 | This Is the End | $13 M | $57.7 M |
| 5 | Now You See Me | $7.8 M | $94.4 M |
| 6 | The Internship | $3.4 M | $38.3 M |
| 7 | Fast and Furious 6 | $4.7 M | $228.4 M |
| 8 | The Purge | $3.4 M | $59.4 M |
| 9 | Star Trek Into Darkness | $3 M | $216.6 M |
| 10 | Iron Man 3 | $2.1 M | $403.1 M |