saidi’s take – 6/24/2025

Hello everyone,

BOX OFFICE: The two new wide releases couldn’t take “How To Train Your Dragon” from the top of the box office this weekend.  It stayed at #1 with $36.5 million, dropping 57% from it’s opening weekend.  The new sequel movie “28 Years Later” took #2 with $30 million.  It actually made MORE per screen – approx. $8700 on around 3450 screens vs approx. $8360 on approx. 4375 screens for the #1 movie.  The original Pixar movie “Elio” had one of the worst opening weekends of any Pixar movie (it might be THE worst) making $20.8 million for #3 (it was on around 3750 screens but only made approx. $5550 per screen). 

Overall the domestic total sunk approx 18.5% from the previous weekend making a total of $125 million.

WORLDWIDE BOX OFFICE: In foreign countries, “28 Years Later” made approx. the same as the domestic total of $30 million for a worldwide total of $60 million.  The Pixar movie “Elio” opened soft internationally with only $14 million in foreign countries for a worldwide total of $35 million.  “How To Train Your Dragon” is still doing very well in foreign countries going down about 31% for $53.5 million for a worldwide total of $358 million.  The worldwide box office for “Lilo and Stitch” just passed $910 million and the worldwide box office for “Mission Impossible – The Final Reckoning” just passed $540 million.

OTHER NEWS:

The director and co-writer of the original “Saw” – James Wan – has now retained the rights to the franchise.  Bloomhouse – who previously merged with James Wans “Atomic Monster” production company – just bought “Twisted Pictures” shares of the franchise.  Lionsgate still has a portion of the IP and will continue to distribute the movies.

LITTLE BIT OF HUMOR:

Select IMAX theaters are having an advance screening of the movie “F1” tonight (Monday June 23) called “F1 The Movie Fan First Premiere Exclusively in IMAX”.  I noticed that the showtime is listed as “ALMOST FULL” on the AMC website…..

 It is technically “almost full” since there’s only one seat available, but most customers would consider a theater with only 1 seat available as “sold out”.  I wonder why they list it as “ALMOST FULL”.

There’s an 11:20am showtime of “The Life of Chuck” with only 2 seats sold (so far).  You don’t see that showtime saying “ALMOST EMPTY”.