In a surprising twist, another new production hits theaters and slightly underperforms. While Lightyear is the only real “non-performer” at the box office, it’s surprising to see Jordan Peele‘s latest miss its $60M projections. Similar to other productions throughout the year, the only real overperformers are holdouts from 2020 in Top Gun: Maverick and Minions: Rise of Gru. In a way, these holdovers have had a lot of momentum built into them that helped lead to their current standing but until something else overperforms, we might not truly know.
Still, Nope opened the weekend box office with $44M with a B CinemaScore could hint at a bigger drop next weekend. Of course, it being an R-rated horror flick, this is a big opening weekend by any other standard; similar to how Marvel comparisons are a tough nut to crack due to their unique aspects. It’s not a disappointing release but it is lower than 2019’s Us ($71M) which might sting a little. There’s a chance this film could leg out.
It’s the third-best opening for an R-rated project since Joker that pulled in $96M and is now behind Halloween Kills‘ $49M. Expectations were higher ahead of Peele’s recent successes and Universal isn’t going to be hurting if one film doesn’t make the benchmark. Similar to how doomsayers for Thor: Love and Thunder miss the fact that it performing decently won’t hurt the production company pulling in a film that almost scratched a billion with its Doctor Strange sequel.
Source: Forbes
