Resident Evil, Zach Cregger’s personal take on the famous horror video game saga, confirmed the expectations set the day before and, at least in the USA, surpassed them: at the Italian weekend box office it opened at the top with €1,440,850 (source Cinetel), while in the American market it grossed $60 million in three days, becoming not only the franchise’s most lucrative theatrical opening but also for the creator of Barbarian and Weapons. Worldwide the Sony Columbia Pictures feature is already at $108,300,000 (source Box Office Mojo). The budget revealed by Variety hovers around $75 million, so there is still ground to cover to break even, but we started off on the right foot… unless the most vociferous fans, deprived of their beloved characters, weigh more on the long run than critics and the informed audience. The latter, however, is able to appreciate the storytelling precisely because Cregger chose to create an ad hoc protagonist for his tale.
At the second place… who else but Cars – Motori Ruggenti (2006) from Pixar, directed by John Lasseter (now at Skydance Animation), returns to the big screen in a twentieth-anniversary rerelease. Although critics at the time marked a setback for the Emeryville studio, after a string of perfectly crafted animated films, the audience has always shown affection for the sentient race car Lightning McQueen… and surely the franchise, which has seen two more installments plus several miniseries on Disney+, remains highly lucrative on the merchandising front. Cars grossed €834,400 over the weekend.
Debuting in third place for the caustic comedy The Invite – The Pleasure Is All Ours, directed and co-starring Olivia Wilde, with Seth Rogen her husband and Penélope Cruz & Edward Norton portraying sexually uninhibited neighbors, triggering a crisis for the two leads. The five-day gross amounts to €716,530 (€560,200 in the weekend alone). Worldwide the film has collected $55,735,630 to date, an excellent result for a carefully budgeted $15 million production, as reported by Deadline.
Coyote vs. Acme, the satirical, mixed-technique film, drops from second to fourth place, a tribute to the comic surrealism of Looney Tunes: spared cancellation, the gem directed by Dave Green arrived in Italy at €3,710,200 (€504,600 over the weekend). The global tally stands at $79,825,100, not yet enough to justify the enormous gift Ketchup Entertainment gave us by acquiring the film from Warner Bros. for $50 million.
From second to fifth place slides Odyssey by Christopher Nolan, a work on which there wasn’t much left to say: another €482,150 adds to the splendid €57,841,100 Italian box office (the highest of the calendar year, with no rival). Universal’s $250 million budget investment was rewarded with a global triumph of $1,721,314,740.
The complete weekend box office
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