You know, we've talked a lot in the last year about Disney/Buena Vista movies dominating at the box office. The studio has had some big grossers in 2018, mostly of the Marvel variety, but also thanks to flicks like Incredibles 2. However, while Disney may have dominated early in the year, right now another studio is taking the cake. Warner Bros. is having a wonderful late summer and is totally dominating at the box office right now thanks to three late-in-the-year wins.
If you've been to the movies lately, there's a good chance that you've seen a Warner Bros. release. Right now, Warner Bros. has three huge movies in theaters: The Meg, Crazy Rich Asians and this weekend's big release The Nun. If you've been paying attention to the box office numbers of late, you may already know that The Nun overperformed this weekend, bringing a record $53.5 million in during opening weekend (on only a $22 million budget, to boot.) Thanks to those hefty numbers, the movie landed the number 1 slot at the box office. It's competitors just so happened to be other Warner Bros. films.
In previous weeks, both The Meg and Crazy Rich Asians have been big box office winners as well, with one Warner Bros. movie taking over for another in that first place slot as the weeks wear on and the season begins to change. The Meg won its opening weekend back in August, also blowing estimations out of the water. The following weekend, Crazy Rich Asians hit theaters, just edging out The Meg in the numbers. For three weeks, Crazy Rich Asians led the pack and then this weekend The Nun came out to higher numbers than expected, soundly whupping the book adaptations that came before it. It should be noted that while Peppermint jumped into the #3 slot in terms of box office numbers this weekend, the rest of the top 4 movies were still the aforementioned Warner Bros. titles.
If you've been paying to attention to the number of weeks I just listed, this weekend actually is the fifth weekend in a row that a Warner Bros. film has been in first place, at least where domestic numbers are concerned. (The Meg has done considerably better than Crazy Rich Asians worldwide, for example.) Fox News mentions it's also the first time a studio has held the top domestic movie slots in nearly three decades. Way back in 1989, Universal Pictures had Parenthood, Uncle Buck and Sea of Love out all at once.
There are times during the year that are primed for moviegoers, which is why we often get tentpole movies midsummer and family and awards releases around the holidays. However, in recent years, studios have looked for other spaces in the schedule to try to make movie work. Disney and Marvel have experimented with late winter releases, with Black Panther hitting theaters and totally dominating in February of this year. For Warner Bros. late summer has worked out this year, despite Warner Bros.' Jeffrey Goldstein revealing the studio landed "a fair amount of criticism" for holding all of its big movies until late summer.
Currently, Disney still leads the cumulative box office, with Universal in second place, but Warner Bros. is definitely on a hot streak and the studio still has quite a few hotly anticipated movies hitting the schedule in 2018. This includes the likes of A Star is Born, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald and Aquaman. You can look into those with our full movie premiere schedule.
