It was a hard-fought battle, but in the end, Transformers: Rise of the Beasts emerged victorious with $60.5 million.
In a battle that came down to the wire, it appears that the autobots have the edge over the multiverse as Transformers: Rise of the Beasts has emerged victorious over Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse in its inaugural weekend with an estimated $60.5 million against Spider-Man’s $55.4 million. Essentially in line with our predictions from Thursday (if we flip flop the titles as I thought Spider-Man would edge out Transformers.)
Chalk that up as a pretty big win for the Transformers franchise after the last Transformers film The Last Knight opened with just $44.6 million while the prequel spin off film BumbleBee opened with just $21.6 million. The difference maker for Beasts over Spider-Man seems to be the premium theaters that Transformers took over this week as it is reported (by Box Office Tracking company EntTelligence) that both films saw similar ticket sales for the weekend (4.3 million each). That extra $5-$10-$15 really adds up. However, since this is the summer where we are playing catch up with the covid pandemic shut downs and back logs, it appears there is a new film taking over those premium screens every week, something that Tom Cruise is not a big fan of. Those other Transformer movies had solid oversea numbers that saved them from being complete box office bombs (with respect to their budgets.) With some pretty big competition in the coming weeks, this one may need big overseas numbers to be considered a profitable endeavor as its budget is reportedly in the $200 million range before marketing.
For Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse, its second week gross represents a solid hold from its $120.6 million opening, with just a 54% drop off, not bad for the longest animated film ever made from a major studio (Two hours and twenty minutes.) Word of mouth on this one is fantastic with many predicting it will follow in the original’s foot steps and win the Oscar for Best Animated Film.
Third place belongs to the live action update of The Little Mermaid with an additional $22.7 million, representing a strong 45% decline. The film is doing stellar business stateside, but in a rare occurrence, it just isn’t connecting with international audiences and will struggle to be profitable in the long run, which isn’t a referendum on the quality of the film as I found the update to be pretty good. Not as good as the original animated classic, but a properly epic live action update.
Coming in fourth place is Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 with an additional $7.02 million, showing yet again that if you make a good comic book movie, audiences will show up. We have become so used to these big comic book movies coming out and taking nose dives in subsequent weeks, but right now in the top five we have two of them that are showing that if you put out quality, people will show up.
Fifth place belongs to the Stephen King adaptation The Boogeyman with an additional $6.9 million added to its $24.7 million domestic cume. Not a bad tally for a film that was originally meant to go directly to streaming. Sixth place will be the Family with Fast X pulling in $5.2 million to its four week total of $138.1 million, which is about $9 million less than Furious 7 made in its opening weekend.
Spots seven through nine belong to The Super Mario Bros. Movie with an additional $2.1 million added to its massive $570.1 domestic take, proving that people are still enjoying this one in theaters even though it is currently available to own on 4K Blu Ray while the battle of the comedians: Bert Kreischer and Sebastian Maniscalco continues this weekend with Maniscalco having the edge as his film About My Father took in $$845,000 against Kreischer’s The Machine’s $575,000. Tenth place belongs to the film with the best per screen average of the weekend (just over $20 thousand per screen) as A24 continues its domination of the independent market with the Asian film Past Lives which saw a $520,772 weekend after expanding to 26 theaters. The film has stellar reviews (currently at 97% on Rotten Tomatoes) and will continue its expansion in the coming weeks.
Did you make it to theaters this weekend? If so, let us know what you saw (and how you liked it) in the comments section and don’t forget to check out our weekly poll where we ask: What is your Favorite Transformers Film?
