After just ten days in cinemas, Disney/Pixar's Inside Out 2 has become the highest-grossing movie of 2024, with a staggering global haul of $724 million. Inside Out 2 has toppled the impressive $711.8 million final tally that Dune Part 2 grossed earlier this year and managed it in a matter of days. Grossing a massive $100 million domestically and more than $200 million internationally in its second weekend should indicate that Inside Out 2 will become the first film to hit $1 billion this year, and that should happen sometime next week
The summer movie had several big-budget false starts, with The Fall Guy, Furiosa, and even The Garfield Movie struggling to find sizable audiences. Thankfully, the box office woke up a few weeks ago when Bad Boys Ride or Die managed a rare achievement and had a bigger opening weekend than expected. The fourth entry in the long-running franchise is currently sitting at a worldwide box office of just under $300 million, and given the lack of other R-rated action movies for the next few weeks, Ride or Die has a good chance of matching the $426 million the previous sequel grossed in 2020.
Typically, the summer movie season represents around 45% of the annual box office; that figure was higher last year due to the overwhelming success of Barbie, Oppenheimer, and The Super Mario Bros Movie, those three releases alone generated more than $3.8 billion worldwide.
Last summer wasn't without its fair share of misfires and underperformers, Fast X, Ant-Man and the Wasp Quantumania, and Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning Part One struggled to match the success of previous instalments without being full-on flops. However, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, Trolls World Tour, Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, The Flash, Shazam Fury of the Gods, and The Marvels (to name a few) all flopped hard at the box office. There's a long list of reasons why each of these titles missed the box office mark; there's no simple "they were all just bad movies" answer. Well, maybe in the case of The Flash, as that was a hot mess of ideas that didn't work.
More hope for the summer 2024 movie season is on the horizon with the feverishly anticipated Deadpool and Wolverine on July 26. Ryan Reynolds finally convinced Hugh Jackman to pick up the claws one more time for the long-desired team-up of these iconic characters. It's the only Marvel release this year, and it is already tracking a record-breaking opening weekend that could be as high as $200 million.