When Toy Story 4 was first announced, there was a lot of conversation online about whether the film was needed. After all, Toy Story 3 seemed to end on such a lovely final note, and a new release would be almost twenty-five years after the original. Well, everyone has a right to his or her own opinion on whether the film should exist, but two weekends in, it's now fair to officially and completely say round four is a hit with critics, a hit with fans and a huge money-making success. The animated feature once again topped this weekend's box office, pulling more than fifty million dollars and adding to its total that now stands at more than two hundred and thirty million.
You can check out the current estimated numbers on Toy Story 4's performance below, as well as the figures for the rest of this weekend's Top 10 below...
Outside of Toy Story 4, the main points of interest here are, probably, Annabelle Comes Home and Yesterday entering the charts for the first time and Avengers: Endgame re-entering the Top 10. Let's ignore the MCU for a minute and talk about Annabelle and Yesterday. No doubt both of these movies were really hoping for a close second place finish. It's hard to imagine either expected to dethrone Toy Story 4 during its second weekend, but there was almost certainly some internal hope that the battle might at least be close. That didn't happen. Neither had a breakout performance, but really, it's hard to complain too much about these figures either.
Both Annabelle Comes Home and Yesterday got solid but not spectacular reviews (Annabelle's were a little better). Word of mouth on both seemed to be relatively positive (Yesterday was a little better), but none of these metrics was spectacular enough to fundamentally change the conversation and attract a lot of viewers outside the target demographics. Without huge budgets, however, these numbers are definitely in the fine range. In fact, with a couple of solid weekends moving forward and some money in streaming/ home video, each should be able to more than make its money back with marketing.
The other story here is definitely Avengers: Endgame putting away another five and a half million dollars in its re-release. That's obviously peanuts compared to the two billion dollars plus it has netted worldwide, but every bit of it counts in the battle to top Avatar for the highest grossing movie of all-time. It's also a great reminder of just how much the target audience really loves this movie. I haven't seen any hard numbers, but I'm pretty confident the majority of people who saw it this weekend are not first timers. It's one thing to generate strong enough word of mouth to get a high percentage of casual viewers. It's another thing to get that but also play so well with hardcore fans that they'll pay to see the film over and over again. In fact, we have multiple people on staff who have seen the film three times in theaters. Three times!
One more quick note: Dark Phoenix found itself completely out of the Top 10 in the box office this weekend. Not good. Prior to Dark Phoenix, the lowest domestic box office performance for any of the eleven films in the franchise was The Wolverine at just over $130M. Dark Phoenix is quickly running out of gas, and it has barely topped $60M. Expect the Mouse House to take a very long look at the X-Men moving forward because something needs to change.
