It was a quiet weekend at the box office, with DC League of Super-Pets, an animated film featuring the voices of Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart, debuting at the top spot with a soft $23 million. Johnson and Hart have established themselves as an odd-couple with undeniable box office pull, thanks to films such as Central Intelligence, Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle and Jumanji: The Next Level.
But perhaps because of League of Super-Pets’ lowkey vibe, and the fact that it is directly competing with holdover hit Minions: The Rise of Gru, the $90 million kid-friendly film about the pets of superheroes will have to rely on solid word-of-mouth to be counted as a success. The film’s $23 million domestic debut pales in comparison to The Rise of Gru’s $107 million opening weekend haul, and also falls short of Lightyear’s $51 million. League of Super-Pets is more in the league of The Bad Guys ($23.9 million), Sing 2 ($22.3 million) and Encanto ($27 million).
Animated films — especially well-received ones — tend to have larger multiples than other movies. For instance, both The Bad Guys and Encanto ended their domestic runs with nearly $100 million, while Sing 2 was a runaway hit with over $160 million. League of Super-Pets got an excellent A CinemaScore from opening day audiences, and has little competition in the weeks ahead. So, it’s probably too early to write it off completely. It also earned $41.4 million globally.
Last week’s number one film, Jordan Peele’s Nope, slipped to the number two spot with $18.5 million, taking its running domestic total to $80.5 million. That’s a solid result for an original horror film marketed on Peele’s brand alone, but it’s no secret that Nope isn't as well-liked as the filmmaker’s previous two movies, and had to contend with a worrying 70% Friday-to-Friday drop. Nope begins its international rollout mid-August.
The third spot was claimed by Thor: Love and Thunder, which added another $13 million to its domestic tally. The film has now passed $300 million stateside, and should finish its run with about as much as Thor: Ragnarok ($315 million) despite less-than-effusive reviews and a bloated $250 million budget. Worldwide, the film has passed $650 million.
The Rise of Gru took the fourth spot this weekend with $10.8 million. The film has made $320 million domestically, and over $710 million worldwide. It’s the biggest animated film since 2019’s Frozen II. Rounding out the top five with a remarkable $8.2 million in its 10th weekend of release is Top Gun: Maverick. The film has made $650 million domestically, and will pass Jurassic World ($653 million) and Titanic ($659 million) in the coming days, to claim the seventh spot on the all-time list.
Elsewhere, the sleeper-hit of 2022, Everything Everywhere All at Once, became the first A24 title to pass $100 million at the worldwide box office, and director B.J. Novak's Vengeance debuted in nearly 1,000 theaters with $1.75 million. You can watch an interview with Peele here: