Mission: Impossible — Fallout holds off Christopher Robin at the box office
Oh, bother. Winnie the Pooh is back on the big screen this weekend — in live action, no less — but he and his pals won’t be on top of the box office.
Tom Cruise’s spy sequel Mission: Impossible — Fallout is poised to win the weekend again with an estimated $35 million from 4,395 theaters in the U.S. and Canada, outgrossing Disney’s Christopher Robin and fellow new releases The Spy Who Loved Me and The Darkest Minds.
For Fallout, that figure represents a decline of just 43 percent from its debut last weekend, and its brings the film’s domestic total to $124.5 million after 10 days in theaters. Overseas, the film will add about $76 million this weekend, putting its international total at an estimated $205 million ($329.5 million worldwide).
Written and directed by Christopher McQuarrie and released by Paramount Pictures, Fallout finds super-agent Ethan Hunt (Cruise) and his IMF colleagues trying to recover stolen plutonium after a mission gone awry. The cast also includes Henry Cavill, Simon Pegg, Sean Harris, Rebecca Ferguson, Ving Rhames, and Angela Bassett. Reviews have been excellent, and audiences gave it an A CinemaScore.
Christopher Robin will debut in second place, with an estimated $25 million from 3,602 theaters, toward the lower end of industry projections. It will add about $4.8 million from international markets.
The film — which stars Ewan McGregor in the title role and uses CGI to bring Winnie the Pooh and his Hundred Acre Wood friends to life — comes as the latest Disney project to put a live-action spin on an animated classic (see also: Maleficent, Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast). Reviews were mixed to positive, while moviegoers gave it an A CinemaScore, suggesting solid word-of-mouth prospects.
The weekend’s other new major releases, Lionsgate’s R-rated comedy The Spy Who Dumped Me and Fox’s dystopian YA tale The Darkest Minds, will settle for the No. 3 and No. 8 spots, respectively.
The Spy Who Dumped Me will take in about $12.4 million, in line with modest industry expectations, but The Darkest Minds is in rough shape with a lackluster $5.8 million. Both movies failed to impress critics and garnered B CinemaScores.
Further down the list is Death of a Nation, the latest documentary from Dinesh D’Souza, the controversial conservative commentator who received a presidential pardon in May for a felony conviction of making illegal campaign contributions. It will debut with about $2.3 million from 1,005 theaters, putting it in 13th place. Film critics have panned the doc.
Also this weekend, Disney’s superhero smash Black Panther — which, yes, is still in theaters — will become just the third film in history to cross the $700 million mark at the domestic box. (The others are Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Avatar.)
According to ComScore, overall box office is up 8 percent year-to-date. Check out the Aug. 3-5 figures below.
1. Mission: Impossible — Fallout — $35 million
2. Christopher Robin — $25 million
3. The Spy Who Dumped Me — $12.4 million
4. Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again — $9.1 million
5. The Equalizer 2 — $8.8 million
6. Hotel Transylvania 3 — $8.2 million
7. Ant-Man and the Wasp — $6.2 million
8. The Darkest Minds — $5.8 million
9. Incredibles 2 — $5 million
10. Teen Titans Go! To the Movies — $4.9 million