Inside Out 2 May Have Saved The Summer Box Office

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Movie theaters across the country must have breathed a huge sigh of relief this weekend. Inside Out 2 finally broke through as the first blockbuster of the summer with a whopping $155 million dollars since Friday. Bad Boys 2 had a decent weekend the week before but other than that, it's been historically bad at the cinema this summer.

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The summer season at the box office starts the first weekend of May (or at least it's supposed to).The Fall Guy kicked it off with a horrific opening of $27.7 million. It did even worse as the weeks rolled on. It hasn't even hit $90 million dollars yet. It's probably dumb to expect anyone under the age of 45 to care about The Fall Guy. It was a decently successful show on NBC for five seasons. This would be like doing a movie about the show Dexter in 2045. Who would give a fuck?

You can point to Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt as reasons this should succeed. I think both actors are really talented and are stars but what does that even mean? Do movie stars even exist anymore? Audiences don't leave home to watch a movie in the theater because someone is in it. IP/Franchises now mean so much more than traditional movie stars. I'm not saying that's good. It just…is.

Kingdom Of The Planet Of The Apes came out the following weekend and did rake in $58 million. That's solid enough but when you consider Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes pulled in $72 million when that came out, $58 is more of a disappointment. But the real disappointment was in the following weekend.

IF was supposed to appeal to both kids and adults. It did neither. Despite a cast featuring Ryan Reynolds, Steve Carell and John Krasinski, this ended up being a bigger disaster than The Fall Guy. It finally crossed the $100 million mark domestically but this cost $110 million to make and that's before advertising and marketing. Paramount lost a fortune on an idea and concept that should have worked but ended up just being a movie that appealed to no one.

Memorial Day weekend had the twin lackluster box office bombs Furiosa and Garfield. These were both dead on arrival…and why wouldn't they be? Fury Road was an inventive and brilliant movie but it also came out 9 years ago. The geniuses at Warner Bros. took out the two stars of the movie and made it a prequel. These are still Mad Max movies. People want to see Mad Max. Not only that but Fury Road won Oscars and the love of critics and still barely broke even.  If you can only muster that if everything goes right, why make this movie to begin with?

As for Garfield, who gives a fuck about Garfield anymore? 

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SOURCE - “Inside Out 2” debuted with an estimated $155 million domestically, the second-highest theatrical opening of an animated film and the first film since Warner Bros.′ “Barbie” to top $100 million during its debut. 

Will this save the box office for the rest of the summer? It has to help that people are going to be back in the habit of going to the cinema again. The bigger problem is that I don't love most of the summer slate. I don't see a world where The Bikeriders and The Exorcism make any sort of box office dent. I think The Bikeriders looks really interesting but that's a Fall movie if I've ever seen one. It's a sad statement but original stories struggle too much to succeed in today's marketplace.

After that we have:

June 28: A Quiet Place; Day One

July 3rd: Despicable Me 4

July 5th: MaXXXine

July 12th: Fly Me To The Moon (with Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum)

July 19th: Twisters

July 26th: Deadpool & Wolverine

The days of massive hits every weekend in the summer just don't exist this year. Deadpool & Wolverine will do great and Despicable Me 3 made $264 Million domestic. Those will both be fine. You could have hits with Twisters and A Quiet Place but I also would have thought IF was a lock to make money.

I know Hollywood is blaming the strike and calling 2024 an aberration. Maybe they are right. Fuck, I hope they are right. I love going to the movies. But what if they are wrong? What if this is the new normal? What if people stop caring about movies? After COVID, I feel like people like going to events more than ever. Is that hurting movies? Inside Out 2 proves that people still do care. I just don't know how many more Inside Out 2's we have left in the chamber.