Posted in: Movies | Tagged: box office, film, HRL

The Numbers Are In: Which Movies Took The Top Spots At The Box Office?

Published Wed, 30 Aug 2017 13:50:12 -0500

The summer blockbuster season technically has another weekend over Labor Day, but Labor Day weekend is notoriously dead and nothing of note is coming out this weekend. The various think pieces have already started like clockwork, blaming everything and anything under the sun. There were some movies that did very well, so let's look at the top five domestic and worldwide box office winners.

First, let's look at the domestic:

Summer's Domestic Top 5: #1 WONDER WOMAN ($406M) #2 GotG VOL. 2 ($389M) #3 SPIDER-MAN ($318M) #4 DESPICABLE ME 3 ($254M) #5 DUNKIRK ($172M)

— Exhibitor Relations (@ERCboxoffice) August 30, 2017

The top three movies this summer were all two superhero movies, but Warner Bros. finally took the top spot for Wonder Woman. That movie caught on like fire here. It's nice that all three of the superhero movies this summer were so well received.

As far as kids movies go, Despicable Me 3 is not a surprising entry to see on this list, since the Minions are still huge merchandise sellers. Dunkirk taking the fifth spot was a surprise. It came out in late July with some serious competition just a week or two before. Christopher Nolan has a strong fan base, but timing is everything. Dunkirk came out at the tail end of the summer season and had no direct competition going into August.

Now let's check out the worldwide box office:

Summer's WW Top 5: #1 DESPICABLE ME ($972M) #2 GotG VOL. 2 ($862M) #3 WONDER WOMAN ($806M) #4 PIRATES 5 ($791M) #5 SPIDER-MAN ($737M)

— Exhibitor Relations (@ERCboxoffice) August 30, 2017

There is overlap here, but we can get some new information looking at those numbers. The worldwide box office is still in love with the concept of Minions, which let Despicable Me 3 walk away with almost a billion at the worldwide box office.

Guardians, Wonder Woman, and Spider-Man all make an appearance, but the big surprise is Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales. According to Box Office Moji, Pirates 5 got 78.3% of its total box office from the worldwide market. So while US audiences are pretty much over the Pirates movies, the rest of the world is not. The rest of the world is also on board for The Mummy, apparently (which got over 80% of its box office from foreign markets), so we're likely getting more of those, too.