Apple Original Films’ had their first bonafide box-office success at the weekend with Joseph Kosinski’s F1: The Movie taking pole-position with a $144 million worldwide debut.
The Brad Pitt starrer achieved what other $200 million budgeted high-profile underperformers Killers of the Flower Moon ($158M) and Napoleon ($221M) couldn’t for the studio, and opened above expectations with $58 million domestic and $88 million from the all-important overseas territories. Not adjusted for inflation, the opening also marked the biggest debut for a Brad Pitt movie, overtaking World War Z‘s $112 million bow in 2013.
The real test will come over the next few weeks to see if F1 can maintain pace without having to pull into the pit lane in the face of stiff competition from Jurassic World Rebirth and The Fantastic Four: First Steps. You can read our review of F1: The Movie here.
Universal and Blumhouse won’t have to worry about such things, because they will be lucky if M3GAN 2.0 is around then. The suped-up sequel to the $226 million grossing 2023 breakout suffered a disastrous domestic opening of just $10.2 million. The $25 million budgeted sequel was equally disappointing overseas, where it scraped $17.2 million, for a cumulative global start of $27.4 million. That’s less than M3GAN‘s $30.4 million domestic opening in January 2023. Read our M3GAN 2.0 review here.
It wasn’t the best weekend for horror sequels, because although Danny Boyle’s 28 Years Later crossed the $100 million mark after just 10-days of release, the critically acclaimed horror’s word-of-mouth and summer scheduling saw the film crater to a sophomore week of just $9.7 million at the domestic box-office. Sony will be hoping that it shows Alpha-style legs to stay in the charts for a few more weeks yet.
As always, let us know what you watched at the arthouse cinema or multiplex this weekend by heading to our social channels @FlickeringMyth…
