Sadness and Joy in ‘Inside Out 2’
Disney/Pixar
Pixar‘s Inside Out 2 stayed atop the domestic box office chart in its third weekend with a hearty $57.4 million, enough to scare off Paramount‘s prequel A Quiet Place: Day One after a closer-than-expected race.
Moreover, Inside Out 2 is celebrating crossing the $1 billion mark in global ticket sales in record time for an animated film, or 19 days. Directed by Kelsey Mann, the sequel introduces a whole new cast of emotions who are brought into “head”-quarters when the story’s young heroine, Riley, becomes a teenager. Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear and Disgust aren’t so sure how to feel about the arrival of Anxiety, Envy, Ennui and Embarrassment.
Amy Poehler leads the voice cast that also includes Maya Hawke, Kensington Tallman, Liza Lapira, Tony Hale, Lewis Black, Phyllis Smith, Ayo Edebiri, Lilimar, Grace Lu, Sumayyah Nuriddin-Green, Adèle Exarchopoulos, Diane Lane, Kyle MacLachlan, Paul Walter Hauser and Yvette Nicole Brown.
A Quiet Place: Day One also has plenty to celebrate after scoring a franchise-best weekend opening of $53 million, well ahead of an expected $40 million-plus debut. The prequel’s performance is especially impressive considering franchise creator John Krasinski didn’t direct this time; nor did Emily Blunt star.
Instead, Michael Sarnoski (Pig) was brought on to helm Day One, based on a story he and Krasinski came up with together. Lupita Nyong’o and Joseph Quinn star in the $70 million pic, which boasts generally strong reviews and a B+ CinemaScore, a good grade for a horror pic. The 18-to-24 crowd is fueling the film, along with an ethnically diverse audience. It also took over many Imax and premium large-format screens from Inside Out 2, which is now in its third weekend.
The Krasinski-directed A Quiet Place was a sleeper hit at the 2018 box office upon opening to $50 million despite virtually no dialogue. A Quiet Place: Part II, hitting theaters over Memorial Day in 2022 as the box office was still in recovery mode from the COVID-19 pandemic, posted a four-day holiday gross of $57 million, including $47 million for the three-day weekend.
Day One continues the June box office rebound begun by Sony’s Bad Boys: Ride or Die and cemented by Inside Out 2.
Coming in third at the domestic box office behind Inside Out 2 and Day One over the weekend was Kevin Costner‘s pricey $100 million Western, Horizon: An American Saga — Chapter One. The film bit the dust with an estimated opening of $11 million (overseas numbers were not immediately available).
Horizon is without a doubt one of the biggest curiosity factors of the summer after Costner left behind a lucrative gig on Taylor Sheridan’s hit show Yellowstone and put up tens of millions of his own money to make his decades-long passion project a reality with four period Western movies.
The hope was that Horizon would strike a chord among older males in America’s heartland. A B- CinemaScore and meh reviews certainly didn’t help its cause.
Warners agreed to distribute and market the movie for a fee in the U.S. Costner — who has tirelessly promoted the movie — invested $38 million of his own money, while two mystery investors also ponied up equity. The rest of the budget came from selling off foreign rights with the help of sales outfit K5 International, which premiered the film at the Cannes Film Festival. (Horizon opens in numerous markets this weekend).
Horizon: An American Saga: Chapter Two opens in short order, on Aug. 16, in one of the more unusual distribution schemes in Hollywood history. Costner also put up the marketing money for Horizon.
Bad Boys 4 almost did as much as Horizon in its fourth weekend, earning $10.3 million to place No. 4. The film’s domestic tally is $165.3 million.
Hindi movie Kalki rounded out the top five with $5 million to $6 million.
More to come.
