Broadway 2023-2024 Season Box Office Hits $1.5B, Holding Steady With Post-Pandemic Era But Lagging Behind Pre-Covid Heights

Rebecca Rubin Senior Film and Media Reporter “Inside Out 2” should evoke an emotion that Pixar hasn’t felt about the box office in years: Joy. The follow-up film to 2015’s cerebral hit “Inside Out” is estimated to score a stellar $80 million to $90 million in its box office debut. If projections hold, it’ll overtake “Dune: Part Two” ($82.5 million) and “Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire” ($80 million) as the biggest opening of the year.

& Juliet, the playful, pop-infused musical that gives Shakespeare’s lovestruck heroine a second chance at life, has recouped its $17 million capitalization, the first new musical of the 2022-23 to do so, and only the fourth new musical to become profitable since the Covid pandemic shutdown.

opened with an estimated $56 million in theaters over the weekend, handing Hollywood a much-needed summer hit and Smith his biggest success since he slapped Chris Rock at the Academy Awards.Expectations were all over the map for “Ride or Die” given the dismal moviegoing market thus far this summer and Smith’s less certain box-office clout. In the end, though, the Sony Pictures release came in very close to, or slightly above, its tracking forecast.“Ride or Die,” produced by Jerry Bruckheimer and directed by Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah, is Smith’s first theatrical test since his 2022 slap of Rock earned him a 10-year Oscar ban.

Broadway box office held fairly steady as the industry settled into a post-Memorial Day summer, with most productions reporting some slippage from the holiday traffic highs.

Rebecca Rubin Senior Film and Media Reporter Whatcha gonna do when “Bad Boys” comes for the box office? If you’re a theater owner, the answer is hopefully sell some tickets. Sony’s “Bad Boys: Ride or Die,” the fourth installment in the Will Smith and Martin Lawrence-led buddy cop series, is targeting $30 million to $50 million from 3,850 theaters in its first weekend of release. As that cavernous range suggests, estimates vary greatly depending on whom you ask.

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent Seriesmakers, twinning Series Mania, Europe’s biggest TV fest, and European film-TV powerhouse Beta Group, is opening up its selection criteria to embrace directors of box office smashes or hits at festivals beyond “A” list events. Launching 2022 as a project-based mentorship program for film directors aiming to become TV series creators, Seriesmakers has fast consolidated as one of Europe’s top-notch training facilities. “Game of Thrones” producer-director Frank Doelger, “Babylon Berlin” producer Stefan Arndt, Ron Leshem (“Euphoria,” “No Man’s Land”) and “Narcos” creator Chris Brancato featured as speakers at its 2023-24 edition.

In A Violent Nature, an undead murderous monster’s slow striding through the woods, has generated IFC Films’ second-best opening ever since its indie horror hit Late Night With The Devil in March.

Garfield is at No. 1 at the box office, but it’s been a sluggish early summer.

Ethan Shanfeld More money, more problems. That seems to be the motto of Netflix‘s brand new competition series, in which one contestant is saddled with a $1 million prize as the other 11 players fight to hunt them down and claim it for themselves. The series, with the working title “Million Dollar Secret,” will be hosted by Peter Serafinowicz, the British comedian and actor whose credits include “Guardians of the Galaxy,” “Shaun of the Dead,” “John Wick: Chapter 2” and “Spy.” Here’s how the competition works, in Netflix’s own words: “The million-dollar prize is won by one of 12 players right at the start of the first episode.

Broadway box office was down just a bit last week, about 3%, with the first week of the 2024-2025 season reporting a total gross of $35,295,405 for 34 productions. Total attendance was off just shy of 2% from the previous week, settling at 287,246.

Refresh for latest…: Warner Bros’ Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga was greeted with a very warm reception during its Cannes Film Festival world premiere in an early showcase last week, and amid much love for franchise architect George Miller. It has followed up with strong critical and social scores. Nevertheless, in this currently wonky theatrical landscape, the prequel underperformed in its global opening this launch weekend, grossing $58.9M from 76 total markets through Sunday.

EXCLUSIVE: Disney/Pixar‘s Inside Out 2 came on tracking this AM and sources are telling us it’s bound to be the highest opening at the domestic box office year-to-date, inching out Dune Part Two ($82.5M) and Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire ($80M) with a 3-day between $80M-$85M. Inside Out 2 opens over the Pixar tried-and-true Fathers Day weekend of June 14-16.

Ed Sheeran has broken out a number of old favourites and rarities at his recent ‘X’ 10th anniversary show in New York. Find footage of the gig and the full setlist below.The gig took place at the historic Barclays Center in New York last night (May 22), and marked a special one-off show from the singer-songwriter to celebrate 10 years since the release of his now iconic sophomore album, ‘X’.To mark the milestone, Sheeran broke out a complete rendition of the album’s tracklist at the venue – launching with opening track ‘One’, and proceeding to play the release in its entirety, start to finish.As well as fan favourites including ‘Photograph’, ‘Sing’ and ‘Thinking Out Loud’, the setlist also saw Sheeran perform a number of songs for the first time in years, and break out some of the tracks for their first-ever live rendition.Both ‘New York’ and ‘Nina’ for instance, were given an airing out for the first time in 10 years – with Sheeran last performing them both just after his second album dropped.It was a similar case for ‘Runaway’, ‘The Man’, ‘Afire Love’ and ‘English Rose’, which all got played at the Brooklyn venue for the first time since 2015.

Rebecca Rubin Senior Film and Media Reporter Lionsgate has added three movies to its release calendar. “Flight Risk,” an aviation thriller starring Mark Wahlberg and directed by Mel Gibson, will land on Oct. 18, 2024, while Dave Bautista-led action-comedy “The Killer’s Game” will debut on Sept.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Local blockbuster, “The Roundup: Punishment” extended its dominance of the South Korea theatrical box office for a fourth weekend. That lifted its cumulative total to a powerful $75 million. “Punishment,” the fourth part of a brutal action comedy film franchise produced by and starring Don Lee (aka Ma Dong-seok), earned $3.05 million between Friday and Sunday, according to data from Kobis, the tracking service operated by the Korean Film Council (KOFIC).

Rebecca Rubin Senior Film and Media Reporter Disney and 20th Century’s “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” conquered the international box office again with $40.6 million in its second weekend of release. So far, the fourth chapter in the “Apes” reboot franchise has generated $136 million overseas and $237 million globally. It currently stands as the fourth-highest grossing movie of the year, behind “Kung Fu Panda 4” ($533 million), “Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire” ($561 million) and “Dune: Part Two” ($710 million).

imaginary friends movie “IF” claimed the top spot at the box office this weekend according to studio estimates Sunday. Its $35 million North American debut was also a bit lower than some projections.Is that a disappointment? An ominous sign of the box office times? Or is the final story on “ IF ” yet to be written? It’s not just your imagination: In these bumpy early weeks of the 2024 summer box office season, in which nothing has been a runaway hit and every new movie has more and more pressure to succeed, “IF” hit a nerve.Starring Ryan Reynolds, Cailey Fleming, and an army of A-list voices including Steve Carell, Matt Damon, Emily Blunt, Louis Gossett Jr., Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Maya Rudolph, “IF” was an original idea from Krasinski, who wrote, directed and co-stars.Paramount debuted the film, which cost a reported $110 million to produce, in 4,041 locations in North America.

MGM/Imax’s The Blue Angels lands a hefty $1.3 million on just 255 domestic Imax screens from limited showtimes in the large format exhibitor’s exclusive theatrical engagement. The Paul Crowder film, with Glen Powell and Bad Robot as producers, follows the Navy’s famed demonstration flying squadron. It also “ushers in a new era for IMAX Documentaries, or Docu-busters,” the company said. It’s no. 9 at the domestic box office

EXCLUSIVE: The Philippines‘ Star Cinema and GMA Pictures are teaming up to produce Hello, Love, Again, the sequel to blockbuster hit Hello, Love, Goodbye.

according to The Numbers.The Post called the movie, which has Ryan Reynolds as its leading man, “a schmaltzy family flick that makes less sense the more you think about it.”It is slated to earn $31.5 million this weekend, which is a staggering $10 million less than was originally predicted, according to Screen Rant.Disney’s “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” came in second, with $6.8 million in sales. This is a 70% departure from its earnings on May 10, its opening day, Variety reported.The sci-fi flick, a sequel to 2017’s “War for the Planet of the Apes,” “continues this damn dirty science-fiction franchise’s reign as one of the best out there,” according to The Post.Landing in third was “The Strangers: Chapter 1” with a $5.1 million take.The horror film is centered around a young couple stranded in a remote town and forced to stay in an Airbnb where they are terrorized by three masked strangers.Its director, Renny Harlin, who was at the helm of “Die Hard 2,” “Deep Blue Sea” and “A Nightmare on Elm Street 4,” already completed parts two and three of the trilogy.