Monday Update: Final numbers below. 

Sunday Update:

In what was originally expected to be a neck-and-neck weekend, one film broke away from the pack, as Mission: Impossible Fallout earned $35.0M. That’s higher than its Saturday studio estimate of $33.0M.

After leading last weekend, Paramount’s Tom Cruise sequel dropped only -42% in its sophomore frame. Among the six Mission: Impossible installments, that’s the second-best sophomore weekend hold. Only December 2011’s Ghost Protocol, with -32% in its first post-holidays weekend, fared better.

Disney’s Christopher Robin, which was projected to go toe to toe for the top spot, fell slightly behind pre-release expectations with $25.0M. That’s below Saturday’s studio estimate of $27.7M.

It’s also Disney’s lowest opening (discounting the studio’s nature documentaries) since Pete’s Dragon in August 2016.

On the other hand, Robin‘s opening alone is still about as high as the entire cumulative gross of Disney’s previous installment featuring the characters. 2011’s fully animated Winnie the Pooh opened to $7.8M, en route to $26.6M total.

Robin‘s audience was 60% families, 56% female, and 39% under age 16. They gave the film an “A” average CinemaScore.

Lionsgate’s action comedy The Spy Who Dumped Me started with $12.3M, about in line with industry expectations.

Among similar titles, that’s higher than Rough Night ($8.0M) and The House ($8.7M), but slightly lower than Hot Pursuit ($13.9M) and A Bad Moms Christmas ($16.7M).

The audience was 62% female and 70% older than 25.

[Read our interview with The Spy Who Dumped Me director Susanna Fogel here.]

Elsewhere at the box office, Fox’s young adult sci-fi The Darkest Minds opened behind its already-low expectations, starting in 8th place with $5.8M.

This would seem to instantly kill any possibility for a potential sequel, as had occurred with many other fantastical young-adult films this decade such as Percy Jackson, The Maze Runner, Divergent, or The Hunger Games.

Compared to similar titles, Minds opened lower than The 5th Wave ($10.3M) but higher than The Space Between Us ($3.7M).

[Read our interview with The Darkest Minds producer Shawn Levy here.]

Last but not least — in fact, the opposite of least — is Black Panther. Disney’s superhero juggernaut, originally released in February, finally crosses $700M domestically on its 25th weekend of release.

The film is just barely playing in theaters at this point, at only 25 screens in the entire country. (Although that was actually a slight increase from 15 theaters the weekend prior.) And the film had earned less than $100K for each of the past six weekends.

But slow and steady wins the race. The film becomes only the third film to reach $700M total, after Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Avatar. It also seems almost certain to ultimately finish higher than this summer’s Avengers: Infinity War, despite that title opening higher than Panther.

Adjusted for ticket price inflation, Panther is the #30 highest grossing film ever. (Four other 21st century films are ahead of it on that measure: Force Awakens, Avatar, Jurassic World, and the original Avengers.)

Total box office this weekend is $138.5M. That’s 11% behind last weekend, but 12% ahead of this same weekend last year.

Year-to-date box office stands at $7.54B. That’s 8.2% ahead of this same date last year, slightly down from the +8.3% following last weekend.

The post Weekend Actuals: ‘Mission Impossible – Fallout’ Wins Again w/ $35.3M; ‘Black Panther’ Crosses $700M appeared first on BoxOffice Pro.