June Domestic Box Office Hit a COVID-Era High, Best in 2-1/2 Years

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media ReporterEarth’s Mightiest Heroes have nothing on Tom Cruise.Paramount’s supersonic blockbuster “Top Gun: Maverick” has grossed $623.8 million in North America, passing “The Avengers” ($623.3 million) to become the ninth-highest grossing movie in domestic box office history. Industry experts believe the movie has enough gas in its tank to eventually pass the titles in seventh and eighth place, “Titanic” with $659 million and “Jurassic World” with $653 million.For those counting, the top six slots belong to “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” ($936.6 million), “Avengers: Endgame” ($858.3 million), “Spider-Man: No Way Home” ($804.7 million), “Avatar” ($760 million), “Black Panther” ($700 million) and “Avengers: Infinity War” ($678 million).

Adam B. Vary Senior Entertainment WriterSPOILER ALERT: This story discusses major plot developments in Marvel Studios’ “Thor: Love and Thunder,” currently playing in theaters.When Jennifer Kaytin Robinson first got a call from Marvel Studios, it wasn’t about writing the script for “Thor: Love and Thunder” with director Taika Waititi.“I actually pitched to write ‘Captain Marvel 2,'” Robinson tells Variety.

Naman Ramachandran Disney’s “Thor: Love And Thunder” topped the U.K. and Ireland box office for the second consecutive weekend with £4.06 million ($4.8 million), according to numbers released by Comscore.

Zack Sharf Tom Cruise’s “Top: Gun Maverick” is the box winner of the year so far, and it’s not even close. The long-awaited sequel has earned $617 million and counting at the domestic box office and $1.2 billion so far worldwide. Outside of “Spider-Man: No Way Home” and its $1.9 billion gross, “Top: Gun Maverick” has been hailed by many in the press as reigniting the box office after the pandemic woes.

Refresh for latest…: There remains plenty of action at the international box office as we head into the dog days of summer and with fewer wide releases to come. This past week and weekend includes milestones aplenty for such films as Thor: Love And Thunder, Minions: The Rise Of Gru, Jurassic World Dominion, and the seemingly unstoppable Top Gun: Maverick. But it’s not a free-for-all as audiences now appear more discerning amid the recent barrage of big-ticket titles — adding to that, there is a very threatening heatwave across European majors which is complicating matters on several levels.

The sharp drop is one that has been shared by almost every film in Phase Four of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, as “Black Widow,” “Eternals” and “Doctor Universe in the Multiverse of Madness also fell 67-68% in their second weekends. “Spider-Man: No Way Home” also fell 68%, but that’s to be expected after a historic $260 million opening, and it didn’t stop the film from legging out over Christmas to over $800 million domestic and $1.9 billion worldwide.

J. Kim Murphy “Thor: Love and Thunder” looks to rule the box office again in its second weekend, fending off more modest openers “Where the Crawdads Sing” and “Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank.”While Marvel’s Thor fourquel has an easy path to remaining the weekend’s top release, the superhero film is taking a sizable tumble from its opening.

Brent Lang Executive Editor of Film and MediaBaz Luhrmann’s “Elvis” topped $100 million at the domestic box office on Friday, becoming one of the rare films without superheroes or dinosaurs to reach that mark. Globally, the Warner Bros. film has made over $170 million, an impressive result for this kind of material.To be fair, “Elvis” was expensive.

In a remarkable benchmark for an adult, female-skewing movie, especially with a 2 hour 39 minute running time, Warner Bros.’ Elvis has crossed the $100M mark at the domestic box office.

Samara Weaving (The Valet) and Tony Revolori (Spider-Man: No Way Home) are the latest additions to the cast of Scream 6, Deadline can confirm. They join an ensemble that also includes Melissa Barrera, Jasmin Savoy Brown, Mason Gooding and Jenna Ortega, who toplined the fifth film in the franchise, along with Hayden Panettiere, Courteney Cox, Dermot Mulroney, Jack Champion, Liana Liberato, Devyn Nekoda, Josh Segarra and Henry Czerny.

The latest edition in the seemingly never-ending Marvel Cinematic Universe arrives in UK cinemas tomorrow (July 7). Thor: Love And Thunder is the sixth MCU film to be released in the last year, following a slight hiatus during the Covid-19 pandemic, just a couple of months on from the release of Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness.

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media ReporterGet ready for more Marvel mania.Disney’s “Thor: Love and Thunder,” the fourth standalone story about Chris Hemsworth’s hulking God of Thunder and the second (of three) Marvel movies to play in theaters in 2022, is gearing up to turbocharge the domestic box office. The nth sequel in the sprawling MCU is expected to bring in anywhere from $145 million to $155 million over the weekend, with some estimates reaching as high as $170 million.

Illumination Entertainment/Universal’s Minions: The Rise of Gru didn’t stop making money just because it wasn’t a holiday. The pic’s gross yesterday saw $18.9M, which is easily the best Tuesday ever for an Illumination Entertainment title at the domestic box office, besting the $17.5M made by the animation studio’s Sing on Dec. 27, 2016.

Jessica Kiang With eternal respect to Virginia Woolf, whose “A Room of One’s Own” clearly inspires the title of Ioseb ‘Soso’ Bliadze’s beautifully articulate miniature, even before a woman needs money and her own space to be able to pursue self-fulfillment, she needs to know she needs those things. Bliadze’s superbly performed, remarkably immersive Karlovy Vary competition entry is one such story of tentative, interior emancipation, described in the tiniest arcs of change: the width of a smile, the warmth of an embrace, the directness of a gaze.

TheWrap’s own Alonso Duralde writes, “Love and Thunder” contains “many of the surface pleasures of an MCU movie but also a nagging sensation that none of this quite works.”“Similar to ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ and ‘Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness’ before it, ‘Thor: Love and Thunder’ [is] an excellent example of Marvel still not being quite sure how to pick up ongoing narratives that get interrupted by massive crossover events,” The Verge’s Charles Pulliam-Moore writes. “‘Love and Thunder’ clearly wants to keep its focus fixed on Thor, who hasn’t headlined his own film since 2017.

Naman Ramachandran Universal’s keenly anticipated animation “Minions: The Rise Of Gru” debuted atop the U.K. and Ireland box office with £10.4 million ($12.5 million), according to numbers released by Comscore.

Moviegoing is definitely back with viewers flocking to franchise films that 1) continue to roll out in the first sustained barrage of big new titles since Covid, and 2) continue to do huge business as they stick around in theaters. They’re sucking up screens and exacerbating a release-pattern quandary for independent distributors seeking signs that a rising tide raises all boats.

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media ReporterNeed proof the box office is really, truly rebounding from COVID?Look no further than domestic charts, where not one, not two, but four movies — a mix of new releases in Baz Luhrmann’s musical biopic “Elvis” and Blumhouse’s creepy thriller “The Black Phone,” as well as leftovers with “Top Gun: Maverick” and “Jurassic World Dominion” — are pulling in healthy ticket sales.It marks the third straight weekend that more than one major movie has managed to sell a meaningful number of tickets. After a tough stretch for movie theaters, which were closed for months during the pandemic and then greatly struggled to rebound, it’s a welcome change in pace because, at long last, it signals that audiences of all ages are returning to the big screen.