Some outlets are calling Interstellar‘s $50 million weekend gross “slightly behind expectations,” though I doubt anyone’s complaining. It also added $2.2 million from its early, film-only release in 250 theaters, putting it right in there with Gravity ($55.785m opening) and Inception ($62.785m). Including its $80 million overseas, Interstellar opened to $132.2 million worldwide, which is pretty good for a nearly-three-hour movie that tries to explain the singularity. Like Inception, Interstellar received a B+ cinemascore. Science me, Nolan. Science me raw.
Of course, a good animated movie from Disney trumps anything else, as Big Hero 6 outdid Interstellar domestically, with $56 million. Overseas it gets a little more complicated, where Big Hero 6 opened in Russia two weeks ago but is rolling out slowly everywhere else. It has grossed $79.2 million worldwide. It received an A cinemascore and is actually better reviewed than Interstellar, 91% to 75% on Rottentomatoes. They both cost $165 million to make. Families made up 70% of Big Hero 6‘s audience. All in all, it was a massive improvement over Big Heroes 1-5, which I can’t even find numbers for (*dodges tomato*)
Interstellar‘s opening was actually Christopher Nolan’s worst since The Prestige in 2006 ($14.8 million). Of course, the three in between included two Dark Knight movies and Inception, and that stat should mostly just tell you why Nolan is allowed to do anything he wants, with four movies opening with $50 million+ in a row.
Not surprisingly, Interstellar set a record for IMAX.
The space opus did massive business on Imax and premium-large format screens, with Imax locations alone turning in $13.4 million, a record for a non-sequel and the largest percentage ever of the total gross (25 percent). Interstellar skewed slightly male (52 percent), with 75 percent of the audience over the age of 25.
It was also only the fourth time in history two movies have grossed more than $50 million on the same weekend (assuming the actual numbers released tomorrow still show Interstellar over $50 million):
In all three previous instances, they were an animated and live-action movie — Monsters University and World War Z; Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa and Prometheus; and Wall-E and Wanted — and in all three cases, the animated offering won. [HollywoodReporter]
And Interstellar and Big Hero 6 seem to be the most quality of those four combos, so that’s pretty cool. Also cool, David Fincher’s Gone Girl surpassed $300 million worldwide, and Bill Murray’s St. Vincent continues to hold remarkably well, declining only 21% from its fourth to its fifth weekend. Between Interstellar, Gone Girl, Birdman, Nightcrawler, and sure, St. Vincent (and Big Hero 6, judging by others’ opinions), I can’t remember the last time there were this many decent movies playing at the same time. I hardly know where to direct my bile! Maybe space the good ones out next year, instead of dropping them all at once after a summer of unrelenting shit? Just a thought.
Next week brings us the expanding Theory of Everything, Dumb and Dumber To, Beyond the Lights (which I hadn’t heard of until just now), plus limited releases for Foxcatcher, Rosewater, The Homesman, and Kirk Cameron’s Saving Christmas, which gets 400 screens (!!!), assuming those evil Muslim hackers don’t destroy it before then. I just don’t understand why they hate Christmas so much.