You have probably never asked yourself who would win in a fight, Ethan Hunt or Winnie the Pooh - but for those of you who have had that strange idea, we now have a definitive answer. Going into the weekend it looked like there was going to be some stiff competition between Christopher McQuarrie's Mission: Impossible - Fallout and Marc Forster's Christopher Robin, but now that the dust has settled the numbers have revealed a surprising gap. Check out the domestic totals for the two films and the rest of the Top 10 below, and join me after for analysis.
Last week estimates suggested that Christopher Robin would make somewhere in the vicinity of $30 million, and it turned out that it fell a hair below that mark. As a result, Mission: Impossible - Fallout was able to keep the box office crown for two weeks in a row (a feat that we haven't repeated a lot this summer). The massive blockbuster, which has earned some of the best reviews of the year, followed it's $61.2 million start (a new record for the franchise), with a fantastic $35 million in its second weekend. That means it only dropped 42.8 percent, which is a legitimately impressive.
The news only gets better when you look at the worldwide numbers. The $124.5 million that Mission: Impossible - Fallout has made to date domestically is actually less than 40 percent of the global total, which stands at $329.5 million. Admittedly the film was made with a heafty budget - partially because of huge stunt pieces, partially because of Tom Cruise's on-set injury that delayed production - but by the time the film finishes its theatrical run the folks at Paramount should be very happy with the results - particularly because we have a bit of a slow August ahead of us.
As for Christopher Robin, the box office performance very much matches the critical reaction: it's fine. The Disney movie has a mediocre 68% on Rotten Tomatoes, and, as mentioned, the box office totals are on the low end of expectations. Audiences are apparently really loving it, as CinemaScore is reporting an "A" grade, and like the case with Mission: Impossible - Fallout we'll have to wait and see the affect that the soft upcoming weeks will have. Family films will have a certain advantage thanks to the fact that parents will be looking for something to do with the kids, which puts Christopher Robin on the radar. There is, however, also some competition, such as Ken Marino's Dog Days, which is out on Friday.
The other new releases this week, Susanna Fogel's The Spy Who Dumped Me and Jennifer Yuh Nelson's The Darkest Minds, weren't exactly expected to make much of a splash, and they lived up to that very specific hype with debuts in the three and eight slots, respectively. Despite their very different genres, both films were made for around the same amount of money ($40 million and $34 million), and aren't starting off in great positions. The Spy Who Dumped Me obviously sits in a better position, and perhaps has a chance to make its money back, but Yuh Nelson's sci-fi adventure has a much longer road ahead of it.
The new titles shifted things pretty much as expected, though you may have noticed one notable drop. The animated Teen Titans Go! To The Movies didn't really have an auspicious start debuting in fifth place last weekend, but it's never great to fall from fifth to tenth. The blame can't really be put on falling numbers, as the $4.9 million is only down a modest 53.3 percent, but it's particularly unfortunate because audiences are responding positively and critics have given it great reviews.
We have a strange slate set up next week, with Jon Turteltaub's The Meg, Ken Marino's Dog Days, and Spike Lee's BlacKkKlansman going toe-to-toe - and I'll be back here next Sunday to see how things shake out in the Top 10.
