Refresh for more…As expected, 20th Century Studio’s Devil Wears Prada 2 was the fashion supreme at the worldwide weekend box office with a second frame of $118.8M ($43M domestic, a sexy hold of -44%, and $75.8M international in 51 territories, a -46% hold), taking its running global cume to $433.2M ($144.8M stateside, $288.4M abroad), and sending Disney past the $2 billion global mark. The Mouse House becomes the first major motion picture studio to cross that threshold year to date, their other hits including Hoppers ($371.6M), Send Help ($94M WW) and the carryover success of last year’s Avatar: Fire & Ash and Zootopia 2. We told you on Friday that the David Frankel directed Devil Wears Prada 2 already surpassed the filmmaker’s original 2006 title’s global lifetime cume of $326.5M.
Note since we posted domestic last night, the majors have taken their North American weekend estimates higher on account of Mother’s Day. We’ll see what holds.
Michael as we told you moonwalked past the half billion mark, it’s updated global cume at $577M ($240.4M domestic, $336.88M overseas) after a $95M third weekend ($36.5M domestic, great -32% hold, $58.5M overseas, awesome -33%). The movie continues to pace ahead of Bohemian Rhapsody at the same point in time including and excluding China. As we told you, the Graham King production already outstripped the domestic of the producer’s Bohemian Rhapsody ($216.7M).
Adeline Rudolph in ‘Mortal Kombat II‘
Warner Bros/Everett
Coming in lighter, but higher than its previous 2021 Covid impacted installment, is New Line/Warner Bros’ Mortal Kombat II with $63M worldwide. Warners believes the movie can hit a $40M domestic opening while overseas is pegged at $23M (under the $30M that was expected) in 78 territories on 31K screens. The movie cost $80M production before marketing. After that record-breaking viewed red band trailer last year, and tracking’s bullish $50M outlook, this is slightly upsetting. In the same breath, no spilt milk moving it to mid-May from last year’s October. The sequel is part of a summer box office momentum (in North America all titles grossed $162.1M per Comscore, +89% from a year ago). But duly note when you have a big marketing launch with an asset like that red-band trailer last year, telling fans that the sequel was destined to open in mid-October 2025, and then you change it up on them, there’s a whole re-calibration and re-introduction that goes on in the campaign to re-engage fans, and that cost bucks. The sequel will soon surpass the lifetime of the 2021 movie ($84.4M WW) which had a theatrical day-and-date release stateside with HBO Max as part of Warners’ pandemic project popcorn.
Amazon/MGM Studios’ The Sheep Detectives came in with a global start of $28M (studio is seeing a $15.9M North American opening with $12.1M overseas from 75 territories, a 70% offshore footprint).
Paramount’s Billie Eilish: Hit Me Hard & Soft concert movie opened to $20.1M worldwide ($7.5M domestic, $12.6M overseas in 56 markets, a 99% offshore footprint). 3D drove 86% of the overseas B.O. and 88% of the domestic B.O. Best ranked opening for the concert pic was Sweden, where it debuted to No. 2 with $287K while the pic’s top grossing territory was UK with $2.3M, opening in 5th place at 578 sites. It would have been interesting to see what this movie could do on a different date, closer to the end of her 2025 tour (or even sandwiched between 2024-2025 tour) with the full fire breathing power of Imax and sans any fanboy wide entry in the marketplace.
Premium Large Format screens represented 26% of the pic’s North American box office, including 16% from Dolby screens.
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