Okay, fine: The No. 1 movie in America last weekend was Despicable Me 3. Kids still go crazy for those Minions. Are you happy now? However, although it topped the domestic box office, Despicable Me 3 still experienced something of a soft opening, pulling in $10 million less than its predecessor did on its opening weekend.
The real success story of the week is Edgar Wright’s Baby Driver, which zoomed into No. 2 with $21 million; that’s more than double Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World’s $10.6 million opening weekend, putting Baby Driver well on its way to becoming Wright’s biggest movie yet. Even more impressive, it did so despite opening in 1,000 fewer theaters than its closest competition, Transformers: The Last Knight, which dropped a precarious 62 percent in its second weekend to come in at No. 3. The yawning chasm between the two films’ Rotten Tomatoes scores (97 percent and 15 percent, respectively) may have contributed to their varying fortunes—or maybe after five movies’ worth of KRRRRANGgggggggggFFFPhiiTtttrrrrrrrrrrBWOMP, Optimus Prime and company have simply given America a migraine.
The other major new release this week was Warner Bros.’ R-rated comedy The House, which limped in at No. 6 with a $9 million opening weekend. Between this and the lackluster performance of Sony’s Bridesmaids/Weekend At Bernie’s mashup Rough Night a few weeks back—not to mention poor showings for Baywatch and Snatched earlier in the summer—Variety is already ringing the death knell for raunchy R-rated comedies. That narrative is complicated by a little movie called The Little Hours, though, which made $61,560 on two screens for the weekend’s best per-theater average. The relatively tame, but still R-rated, The Big Sick also continues to do healthy business (har har) in limited release, experiencing a nearly 300 percent increase in business as it expanded in its second week.
In much bigger business, Wonder Woman continues to lasso up impressive amounts of cash, pulling in another $16.1 million domestically (and $13.6 million internationally) in its fifth weekend to solidify its place as the DCEU’s biggest movie yet, and the third-biggest movie based on a DC superhero, period. It‘ll face a challenge this coming weekend, though, from Sony’s Spider-Man: Homecoming, which has the added benefit of being Spidey’s first feature-length adventure within the Marvel Cinematic Universe.