Lionsgate is on a quest to right the ship after a terrible 2024 at the box office, and it’s off to a good start with “Den of Thieves: Pantera,” which earned a $15 million opening weekend from 3,008 locations.
Not only is that the first No. 1 for the studio since “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes” in November 2023, it is their highest opening weekend since that film as well. It also matches the unadjusted opening of the first “Den of Thieves” back in 2018 and beats the $10.2 million opening of “Plane,” Lionsgate’s last film with “Den of Thieves” star Gerard Butler.
Reception for the film has been mixed-to-positive with a B+ on CinemaScore, same as the first film, along with Rotten Tomatoes scores of 58% critics and 79% audience. Produced by Tucker Tooley in association with eOne, G-Base and Diamond Film Productions, the film carries a reported $40 million budget with the break-even point lowered by Lionsgate’s traditional use of foreign presales to recoup costs.
In second is Disney’s “Mufasa” with $13.2 million in its fourth weekend, pushing the “Lion King” prequel past $500 million worldwide with $188 million domestic and $539.7 million worldwide. In the coming week, it will pass the global runs of “Kung Fu Panda 4” and “Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire” to become the seventh-highest grossing release of 2024.
Paramount’s “Sonic the Hedgehog 3” takes third with $11 million, enough to make it the first film in the Sega series to cross $200 million in domestic grosses. The film’s running total now stands at $204.5 million domestic and $384.8 million worldwide.
It’s a mixed weekend for Paramount as the continued success of “Sonic” comes alongside the extremely poor performance of “Better Man,” which barely grossed more than $1 million from 1,291 theaters. It’s less than the $1.38 million that A24’s acclaimed “The Brutalist” made this weekend from just 68 screens.
The film was produced independently on a $110 million budget, with Paramount acquiring the film for $25 million.
A music biopic about British pop star Robbie Williams in which he is depicted as a CGI ape, “Better Man” earned strong reviews with an 87% critics and 94% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. But Williams’ popularity has never extended beyond Britain, and his lack of notoriety is causing the film to go largely ignored. Even in the U.K., “Better Man” isn’t doing well, having already dropped out of the top 5 in that country with just $4.8 million grossed as of last weekend.
Back in the top 5, Focus Features’ “Nosferatu” takes fourth with $6.8 million, bringing its domestic cume to $81.8 million. Disney’s “Moana 2” is fifth with $6.3 million, giving it a running total of $434.6 million and $989 million worldwide, standing on the threshold of becoming Disney’s third 2024 release to cross the $1 billion mark.
