Box Office Week: The Lion King is #1 again with $75.5M as it passes $950M worldwide. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is #2 with the best opening of Tarantino's career with $40.3M. Both Aladdin and Spider-Man: Far From Home pass $1B worldwide.

Rank	Title	Domestic Gross (Weekend)	Worldwide Gross (Cume)	Week #	Percentage Change	Budget
1	The Lion King (2019)	$75,524,000	$962,675,534	2	-60.6%	$260M
2	Once Upon a Time in Hollywood	$40,350,000	$40,350,000	1	N/A	$90M
3	Spider-Man: Far from Home	$12,200,000	$1,036,855,270	4	-42.5%	$160M
4	Toy Story 4	$9,872,000	$917,928,506	6	-36.5%	$200M
5	Crawl	$4,000,000	$45,862,793	3	-34.4%	$13.5M

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Notable Box Office Stories

• The Lion King (2019) - Don't make a royalty pun. Don't make a royalty pun. Lion King continued its reign (DAMN IT) over the box office this week as it held onto #1 with $75.5M. That's actually a fairly steep drop of 60% from last weekend which could mean some of the more negative takes on the film might have some effect. That effect being it will have to wait like a day or two more to make $1B. Yes this is still a monster hit, as now the film has passed $350M domestic and $950M worldwide. So while this won't exactly become the biggest film of all time, it's certainly far from failing and will soon surpass the other slew of billion dollar Disney remakes to become the #1. All this success (see Aladdin write up below) has lead to an insane feat which is that now Disney has broken its own 2016 record for the most money made by one studio at the box office in a single year. Yes even before Frozen 2 and The Rise of Skywalker comes out the studio has amased a massive $7.67B worldwide with their 2019 films with a little under half the year left to go. Comparing the two years, it's clear the Disney forumla still works. You have a big crossover Marvel movie (Civil War/Endgame), a 'live-action' Disney remake (Jungle Book/Lion King and Aladdin), a Star War (Force Awakens/Rise of Skywalker), a Pixar sequel (Finding Dory/Toy Story 4), and a Disney aniamted film (Zootopia/Frozen 2). Box office may be down for everyone else but Disney knows what the people want...the stuff they liked before. Weirdly simple but effectively bleak.
• Once Upon a Time in Hollywood - In a summer where Disney's safe approach has paid off like gangbusters and every other studio's franchise fair has failed, out comes an autuer driven testament to yeteryear in every way as Tarantino's 9th and self-proclaimed penultimate film Once Upon a Time in Hollywood opened to an excellent #2 with $40.3M. The film is not just a throwback in terms of its 1969 subject matter but also in its structure. It's a film marketed entirely on A-listers and its directors. It's a 2 hour 45 minute movie that's fairly plotless that invests entirely in knowing and appreciating the director's previous work. That's just not really a film we make anymore, at least not a $90M film that needs to turn a profit and not be another notch in a streaming services belt. And Sony has banked A LOT on this film, a passion project for Sony's chief executive where he gave exclusive rights to the film in perpetuity to Tarantino forever after a certain point. So when the OUATIH toys start selling through the roof, won't Sony look foolish.
• Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (cont.) - But if anyone can do it it's Tino and Leo. Tarantino contiounsly managed to squeeze out profit even for his most expensive and audacious films. And Leo is well...Leo. There's a reason a Hollywood Reporter just dubbed him as "the last movie star", because he kind of is. Think about his last film The Revenant (man we've been Leoless for a while now) which is an over two hour long survival art film that many thought would be one of the biggest financial disasters of the decade and ended up grossing over $500M worldwide. And of course there's also Brad Pitt, who's never been the ideal box office draw but is one of our last just so damn famous people, and Margot Robbie, who if this was 20 years ago would literally be the most famous person in the world. But times are different and there's no garauantee the big opening of OUATIH will equate to a final incredible haul. The film is well regarded critically but scored a B on Cinemascore and there's a growing minority of negative voices who couldn't jive with the film. It's not an easy sell and requires 1) patience and 2) a solid knowledge of Hollywood history in the 1960s to get into. It's just not the kind of classic sell of say The Lion King. So this opening is interesting but the longtail will tell if Tarantino's mournful eulogy to times past is accurate or a bit premature.
• The Billionaire Boyz - You may be tired of remakes and sequels but you know who isn't? The world. As proof both Spider-Man Far From Home and Aladdin both crossed $1B this week. For FFH that makes it the first Spidey film to ever cross that magic mark, a testament to both the longevity and constant interest in that character but more to the MCU's excellent handling of him. Also probably a film that was just Nick Fury filling paperwork for two hours would make $1B after Endgame, but hey Spidey stills deserves that nice milestone. And similarly Disney remakes are here to stay as Aladdin braved those Will Smith genie memes to also cross $1B. While the $350M domestic certainly helped, this was a huge international play across many markets: $96M in Japan, $79M in South Korea, $45M in the UK, and $53M in China. It's a testament to how popular these classic Disney stories are overseas and how screwed Disney will be when they run out of Disney Renaissance movies to remake. "Uhhhhm guess we are doing a Three Caballeros with frighteningly realistic birds?"

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Films Reddit Wants to Follow

This is a segment where we keep a weekly tally of currently showing films that aren't in the Top 5 that fellow redditors want updates on. If you'd like me to add a film to this chart, make a comment in this thread.

Title	Domestic Gross (Weekly)	Domestic Gross (Cume)	Worldwide Gross (Cume)	Budget	Week #
Avengers: Endgame	$2,606,556	$856,447,749	$2,793,047,749	$356M	14
Pokémon Detective Pikachu	$202,026	$143,733,273	$430,733,273	$150M	12
John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum	$1,031,938	$169,703,165	$318,940,854	$55M	11
Aladdin	$6,899,872	$345,928,586	$1,009,728,586	$183M	10
Dark Phoenix	$297,432	$65,577,972	$251,955,972	$200M	8

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Notable Film Closings

Title	Domestic Gross (Cume)	Worldwide Gross (Cume)	Budget
Shazam!	$140,371,656	$364,471,656	$100M

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As always r/boxoffice is a great place to share links and other conversations about box office news.

Also you can see the archive of all Box Office Week posts at r/moviesboxoffice (which have recently been updated).

My Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/Les_Vampires/

Submitted July 29, 2019 at 08:10PM by mi-16evil https://ift.tt/3302C6y