Gru To Rule With $33M+ As ‘Fly Me To The Moon’, ‘Longlegs’ Provide Depth To Weekend Box Office – Preview

Sony is looking to bring the underserved female moviegoing audience to cinemas this weekend with Apple Original Films’ $100M Channing Tatum-Scarlett Johansson stylish romantic comedy Fly Me to the Moon.

The PG-13 Greg Berlanti-directed, Rose Gilroy-penned feature follows a brassy ad exec played by Johansson who gets pulled in by the U.S. government to create a back-up plan for NASA’s 1969 moon landing, while bonding with a launch director played by Tatum. The movie is currently on track for a $12M opening with solid first choice among women over 25, though the pic is slightly behind the George Clooney-Julia Roberts reteam Ticket to Paradise which opened in the fall of 2022 to $16.5M. Reviews are also good currently at 71% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes.

Fly Me to the Moon is one of three movies, including last Thanksgiving’s Napoleon and this fall’s George Clooney-Brad Pitt thriller Wolfs, which Sony won the distribution deal to from Apple; the streamer looking to eventize their movies before they hit the service. Theater count is 3,300 with some PLFs. Advanced previews were held last weekend and will be rolled into Friday’s tally in addition to Thursday previews which begin at 3PM on Thursday.

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Illumination/Universal’s Despicable Me 4 will take the weekend in its second go-round with $33M, -55%. The movie grossed $9.1M yesterday for a running total of $131.7M. Fly Me to the Moon is expected to get out-pegged by the fifth weekend of Disney/Pixar’s Inside Out 2, -40%, for about $18M. Inside Out 2 did $3.7M yesterday taking its domestic cume to $537.9M and its global to $1.23 billion. Stateside, Inside Out 2 is the third highest grossing animated movie after Incredibles 2 ($608.5M) and Super Mario Bros Movie ($574.9M).

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And Neon has the second wide entry of the weekend with the Oz Perkins directed/written R-rated genre pic Longlegs starring Nicolas Cage and Maika Monroe. Right now it’s tracking in the high single digits at 2,500 theaters, but it could surprise given its 93% fresh Rotten Tomatoes reviews and intriguing campaign with four poster teases and puzzling clips, which led into its first trailer drop. Monroe plays an FBI agent who is assigned to an unsolved serial killer case that takes unexpected turns, revealing evidence of the occult. She learns of a personal connection to the killer and must stop him before he strikes again. Neon opened the Sydney Sweeney nun horror pic Immaculate to $5.3M and $15.6M domestic, which for them and their thrifty P&A spends, was a win. Immaculate was a P&A deal for Neon, that under $10M feature financed by David Caplan’s C2. Black Bear sold international on Longlegs and is releasing the Perkins pic in the UK. Neon took domestic in a multi-million dollar deal. Previews start for Longlegs at 7PM Thursday.