Weekend Wrap-Up: Conjuring Conquers Competition with $40.41 million

June 14, 2016

The Conjuring 2: The Enfield Poltergeist

As anticipated, The Conjuring 2: The Enfield Poltergeist led the weekend box office with ease pulling in $40.41 million. The second place film, Warcraft, earned 40% less. Now You See Me 2 only managed third place and it will need a lot of help to break even. The overall box office was $152 million, which is 13% more than last weekend. However, it was also more than $100 million less than this weekend last year. Normally a 44% collapse like this only happens when there is a misalignment in holidays. In this case, it's because of Jurassic World. 2016 is still ahead of 2015 by a substantial margin at $4.76 billion to $4.54 billion. 2016's lead is now 4.8%, more than a full percentage point lower than it was this time last week, but hopefully Finding Dory will help prevent a similar descent this week.

The Conjuring 2: The Enfield Poltergeist didn't quite match the first film, but came close enough to be considered a success. It earned $40.41 million, compared to the $41.86 million the first film made. Granted, you really want a sequel to start faster than the first film, as sequels rarely have as long legs as the original movie does. However, this is still a fantastic result for two reasons. Firstly, this result is better than every other sequel to come out this year, relative to the previous film. Secondly, the film cost $40 million to make, so there's no way Warner Bros. isn't happy with this result. In fact, I would be surprised if they are not already deciding which other one of the Warren's "cases" to turn into the next movie.

Warcraft is part of a small, but growing group of movies. It is a Hollywood production that is more concerned about the Chinese box office than it is concerned about the domestic box office. That's good news, because its opening weekend here was a disaster at just $24.17 million. It also has the worst reviews for any wide release this summer, so its legs will likely be really short. On the other hand, the film has already made more than $160 million in China, so its worldwide box office numbers look a whole lot better. More on that when we talk about the international top five.

Now You See Me 2 really struggled with $22.38 million. This isn't that much lower than Now You See Me opened with, but sequels rarely have as good of legs as the original films, so a small drop during the opening weekend will likely result in a much larger drop overall. Worse still, Now You See Me wasn't an inexpensive movie and had a budget of $70 million, while Now You See Me 2 cost between $90 million and $100 million. Anything more than a 20% drop off worldwide would make earning a profit tricky.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows fell from first to fourth place with $14.39 million over the weekend for a total of $60.63 million after two weeks of release. The film cost $135 million to make, so it will need to rely on international numbers to break even. It is too soon to tell if that's likely, but I'm not overly optimistic.

X-Men: Apocalypse rounded out the top five with $9.92 million over the weekend for a three-week total of $136.29 million. It will reach $150 million domestically, which is below average for the franchise, but with its international result, it should still break even sooner rather than later.

Me Before You just missed the top five with $9.04 million over the weekend for a total of $36.65 million after two weeks of release. It should cross $50 million before its run is over making it a midlevel hit. On the other hand, Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping is a flip with just $1.68 million over the weekend for a total of $8.31 million after ten days of release. Its theater average was just $726, which will likely result in a massive slash to its theater count this Friday.

- Weekend Box Office

- The Conjuring 2: The Enfield Poltergeist Comparisons
- Now You See Me Comparisons
- Warcraft Comparisons

Filed under: Weekend Wrap-up, Warcraft, Finding Dory, X-Men: Apocalypse, The Conjuring 2: The Enfield Poltergeist, Me Before You, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows, Now You See Me 2, Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping, X-Men