UPDATE: Pixar’s “Hoppers” absolutely crushed it this weekend, especially on Saturday, which saw a 90% spike compared to Friday sales. The film is going to have a $46 million weekend, $88 million worldwide, marking the best start for a Pixar original since 2017’s “Coco.”
On the opposite end of the spectrum, Maggie Gyllenhaal’s “The Bride” is expected to lose Warner Bros. a significant amount of money. A $7 million weekend is projected for “The Bride”, with $13 million globally, against a budget of $90+ million—although Puck’s Matt Belloni claims it exceeded $100 million. Regardless, the outlook is not good; the film itself is such an over-the-top mess that, at best, it might eventually achieve cult classic status.
EARLIER: The box office numbers for Thursday preview screenings are slowly trickling in, and a few interesting narratives are starting to take shape.
It looks like it’ll be a two-way race for #1, as “Hoppers,” not counting the $1M it made in Saturday early shows, earned around $2.2M on Thursday. It is quite possible that Pixar’s latest will have an opening weekend in the $35M range.
This would be enough to make “Hoppers” earn the highest-grossing opening for a Pixar original since 2017’s “Coco,” which had a $50M three-day weekend almost nine years ago. Pixar originals have struggled post-Covid, with “Elio” ($20M) and “Elemental” ($29M) having soft openings.
Actually, maybe it won’t even be a two-way race for the top spot, as “Scream 7” might actually have a 60% drop in its second frame. The horror sequel opened last week with $60M, and based on yesterday’s $2.5M intake, we might be looking at a sub-$30M second weekend.
Now, Maggie Gyllenhaal’s “The Bride.” Not looking good for this $90–100M-costing horror-action-arthouse genre mashup.
“The Bride,” which had been projected for a $17M opening before those mixed reviews dropped on Wednesday, had an underwhelming $1M in previews on Thursday — it’s currently looking at $9M for the weekend, which is almost half of what was originally expected.
This is the kind of movie that needed good reviews, but a 56 on Metacritic and at 60% on Rotten Tomatoes just isn’t good enough. In fact, these scores are way too kind — “The Bride” is not good. I’m very curious what the audience scores will be.