- Box Office
World Box Office August 5 – 11, 2019
Jason Statham and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson left the competition in their dust as Universal’s Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw finished its second frame in first place with $86.2 million worldwide. Domestic sales totaled $25.4 million and brought the film’s US and Canada gross to $108.5 million. That number puts it second to last among the studio’s nine Fast & Furious films. At this point, the series’ top earners are well out of reach, but Hobbes & Shaw could potentially make the remaining $46 million it needs to top 2009’s Fast & Furious’s $155 million domestic gross.
Overseas sales were worth $60.8 million and brought H&S’s foreign earnings to $224.1 million. The UK is its top market outside of the US so far with $15.6 million. Russia is close behind with $14 million, followed by Japan at $13.9 million and a strong India gross of $13.8 million. Korea opens next week while China, where audiences typically have a voracious appetite for Fast & Furious films, will have to wait until August 23 to get a taste of H&S’s high-octane action.
Back on the domestic front Lionsgate’s Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark had the strongest opening out of a handful of newcomers with $20.8 million, finishing in second place. Norwegian André Øverdal, the writer and director of the 2010 indie darling Trollhunter, was tapped to direct this adaptation of the homonymous popular 1980s children’s horror novels. The film sees three teenagers in rural Pennsylvania tormented by some of the series’ best-loved monsters after they find a haunted book of scary stories in an abandoned mansion. It made $2.5 million in 21 foreign markets so far for a global total of $23.3 million against a reported budget of $28 million. Horror happy Mexico has its opening next week and should lend a welcome boost to the film’s sales.
Paramount’s Dora and the Lost City of Gold was the next highest opener in the US. It made $19.5 million in its domestic debut, good enough fourth place. Eighteen-year-old Isabela Moner stars as the title character Dora, the star of a popular children’s cartoon, Dora the Explorer. The show had eight seasons and had a bilingual format that taught a generation of children basic Spanish (and English for Latin audiences.) It ran for nineteen years on Nickelodeon, Telemundo, and Univision beginning in the year 2000. City of Gold also made $2.5 million abroad.
Next among this week’s newcomers was Warner Bros.’ mafia wife drama The Kitchen. Melissa McCarthy, Elisabeth Moss and Tiffany Haddish star as a group of moms who take over the family business after their gangster husbands are sent to prison. Kitchen opened to just $5.5 million, landing in 7th place on the domestic chart. Reviews were mostly negative, and audience reaction was on the lower end of neutral with a B- Cinemascore. Warner Bros. will probably be taking a hit on this film that is reported to have cost $37 million before P&A.
In China, the animated hit Nezha crossed the half-billion mark after a $64 million frame brought it to $507.5 million. The Lion King reached $1.334 billion globally, and Toy Story 4 inched closer to the 10-figure club, closing its weekend at $989.9 billion.
Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon A Time in Hollywood, for its part, opened strong in Russia with $7.7 million and reached $108 million worldwide after its second frame.
Next week, teenage comedy Good Boys opens in the US along with Angry Birds Movie 2 and Richard Linklater’s Where’d You Go, Bernadette.
See the latest world box office estimates: