Weekend box office: Alien takes off with $42 million

Alien: Romulus blasted into theaters over the weekend with a final reported box office of $42 million—just a little ahead of 20th Century Studios’ Sunday-morning projection of $41.5 million, and not too far behind our Friday-morning prediction of $49.3 million. Not accounting for inflation, this is the second-best opening for a movie in the Alien franchise, behind Prometheus.

Here’s the final chart, as reported on Monday (click on the image for the full chart of films reporting so far)…

Romulus continues Disney’s good run in theaters. The studio has had good or great openings for four movies in a row now, since Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes opened with $58.4 million back in May. Walt Disney Pictures now stands as the top-grossing distributor of 2024 so far, with 20th Century Studios now in sixth place. All told, the industry giant is getting close to $1.5 billion at the domestic box office (and only $21,068 of that has come from a “regular” Marvel film, The Marvels, which finished its run in January).

Second place this weekend went to Deadpool & Wolverine, which actually held on better than It Ends With Us. The R-rated Marvel movie declined 46% to almost exactly $30 million. It has amassed $546.8 million domestically and $597.9 million internationally, per Disney’s Monday-morning update. That gives it $1.145 billion in the bank worldwide so far.

Alien: Romulus opened with $68.1 million internationally, with an excellent $26.1 million in China. It picked up $5.4 million in Korea and $4.8 million in the United Kingdom. Inside Out 2 remains the 2024 champ, with $985.1 million outside North America as of Monday. Its big territory is Mexico, where it has now accumulated a massive $102.1 million.

Back on the domestic chart, the re-release of Coraline generated fantastic results for Fathom Events, with $9.6 million over the weekend (well ahead of their Sunday-morning projection), and $12.5 million including its great numbers on Thursday.

Stree 2 from Prathyangira Cinemas hit the top 10 with $2.2 million, leaving the two other new wide releases struggling. My Penguin Friend started out with just a shade over $1 million, while Ryan’s World the Movie mustered $420,000 from 1,285 theaters.

– Studio weekend projections

– All-time top-grossing movies in North America

– All-time top-grossing movies worldwide

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Bruce Nash, bruce.nash@the-numbers.com