Twisters, a new chapter in the Amblin-produced, Michael Crichton co-written franchise, will hit U.S. and Canada with a force of $50M from Friday-Sunday. That number will easily outstrip the start of the original 1996 movie which posted $41M.
Already, Twisters counts $12.5M from 38 international box office markets since yesterday. Universal has domestic and Warner Bros offshore on Twisters, which is the adverse of the original which saw Warners releasing in U.S./Canada and Universal abroad. There are 38 more markets swirling in this week, including France, Germany, Italy, Spain, UK and China. It’s currently estimated that through Sunday, the offshore cume will be in the $45M-$50M range, $100M+ WW running cume. Notably still to release are Japan and Korea. All-in-all, a great appetizer before moviegoers en masse feast on Deadpool & Wolverine, which is bound to be the biggest opening for an R-rated movie ever on July 26, besting Deadpool‘s $132.4M 3-day.
Anecdotally, the movie screened at the Taormina Film Festival last night and seemed to get a shoutout from fellow natural phenomenon when active volcano Mount Etna began spewing some fire.
Here in the U.S., Twisters will play at 4,000 theaters with all the power of Imax, PLFS, ScreenX, and more. Universal really believes in the movie and has been screening it for some weeks. On Wednesday, there are fan Imax and PLF screenings starting at 5PM. Previews will continue on Thursday starting at 2PM for the PG-13 rated, Lee Isaac Chung-directed movie. Presales we are here are in line with 20th Century Studios’ Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes from earlier this summer which opened to $58.4M. The original Twister made $241.8M domestic, $494.5M WW (unadjusted for inflation and currency swings).
Universal can lay claim to second place with Illumination’s third weekend of Despicable Me 4 seeing -40% ease for $26M. DM4 won Monday with $5.7M taking its running U.S./Canada total to $215.8M. NEON’s surprise horror movie, Longlegs, made $2.6M yesterday for a four-day of $25M. The Oz Perkins directed and written R-rated Nicolas Cage and Maika Monroe film should decline -55% in weekend 2 with around $10M.