‘Despicable Me 3’ crashes the ‘House’ party
‘Baby Driver’ pulls into second with $21 million
The Minions are LOS ANGELES still a box office force and original stories are scoring big, but not Rrated comedy — even with Will Ferrell and Amy Poehler behind it.
Studio estimates on Sunday say Despicable Me 3 earned $75.4 million for the weekend, while the former Saturday Night Live stars’ gambling comedy The
House burned down. Featuring the voices of Steve Carell, Kristen Wiig and Trey Parker, Despicable Me 3 easily topped the holiday weekend charts. But it’s a far cry from Min-
ions’ $115 million launch in 2015 and lower than Despicable Me 2, which opened to $83.5 million in 2013. Edgar Wright’s heist movie Ba
by Driver coasted to $30 million in its first five days in theaters with $21 million from the threeday weekend to take second place. The crime movie stars Jamie Foxx, Ansel Elgort, Jon Hamm and Kevin Spacey and cost a reported $34 million to produce.
The film did well with critics and is one of a handful of original or independent films this weekend that are notable successes. Sofia Coppola’s Civil War-set film
The Beguiled scored in its second-weekend expansion and earned $3.3 million to take eighth place.
The well-reviewed romantic comedy The Big Sick, starring Kumail Nanjiani, also did good busi- ness in its expansion to 71 locations, earning $1.7 million. It goes wide July 14.
“The best box office stories are further down the chart. They are all benefiting from feeling like the kind of content people are responding to on the small screen,” says Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst for comScore. “Perhaps this is the summer where Hollywood finally starts emulating the small-screen model of creating compelling original content in order to generate goodwill with audiences who have more options than ever before.”
Rounding out the top five were holdovers Transformers: The Last
Knight, which finished third with $17 million, followed by Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman with $15.6 million and the animated
Cars 3 with $9.5 million. Not so successful was suburban gambling comedy The House, which landed in sixth place with only $9 million — one of the lowest of Ferrell’s career.
Overall, the summer box office continues to struggle and is down nearly 8% from last year, while the year to date is close to flat. But the summer box office roller coaster may still have some surprises in store.
Final figures will be released Monday.