Writing about box office for the last decade-plus here on CinemaBlend, I’ve come to the understanding that the true mark of success for a film is its second weekend. With enough promotion and brand recognition, practically any standout release during a given year can top the box office during its opening – but retaining that audience is the real challenge. There are plenty of flash in the pan/frontloaded blockbusters; if a movie can successfully generate positive word of mouth and keep the public excited about it even with new titles arriving on the big screen as competition, it can be understood as true hit.
In that context, Zach Cregger’s Weapons is most definitely a true hit. The hyped film made an impressive debut seven days ago, successfully outperforming industry estimates and earning back its production budget/acquisition cost in just three days – but only now can we call it one of the best box office stories of the year thanks to its impressive ticket sales in its second weekend. The new horror movie managed to crush Timo Tjahjanto’s Nobody 2, and it did so with a minimal weekend-to-weekend dip. Check out the full Top 10 below and join me after for analysis.
|
TITLE |
WEEKEND GROSS |
DOMESTIC GROSS |
LW |
THTRS |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
1. Weapons |
$25,000,000 |
$89,045,000 |
1 |
3,450 |
|
2. Freakier Friday |
$14,500,000 |
$54,776,337 |
2 |
3,975 |
|
3. Nobody 2* |
$9,250,000 |
$9,250,000 |
N/A |
3,260 |
|
4. The Fantastic Four: First Steps |
$8,800,000 |
$247,037,549 |
3 |
3,355 |
|
5. The Bad Guys 2 |
$7,500,000 |
$57,219,000 |
4 |
3,380 |
|
6. Superman |
$5,285,000 |
$340,919,000 |
6 |
2,655 |
|
7. The Naked Gun |
$4,800,000 |
$41,978,000 |
5 |
3,027 |
|
8. Jurassic World Rebirth |
$2,900,000 |
$332,120,000 |
7 |
2,270 |
|
9. F1 |
$2,660,000 |
$182,807,000 |
8 |
1,172 |
|
10. Shin Godzilla |
$1,625,927 |
$4,383,912 |
N/A |
1,290 |
Weapons Continues To Perform Extremely Well As It Easily Wins Its Second Box Office Crown
A couple weeks ago, I wrote in my box office column about how Marvel Studios has been dealing with a persistent second weekend problem since 2021. Marvel Cinematic Universe features continue to be some of the hyped titles on any year’s movie release calendar, but that hype has frequently proven short lived – and the proof is in second weekend ticket sales. But do you know what kind of films aren’t having that problem here in the year 2025? Original horror stories crafted by filmmakers with real vision.
Back in April, the world was taken aback when Ryan Coogler‘s Sinners went from making $48 million in its opening weekend to making $45 million in its second Friday-to-Sunday. It was a success that blew minds, and while Weapons wasn’t able to perfectly replicate that phenomenal box office performance in the last three days, it nonetheless did incredibly well and solidified the epic scary movie as a special new release.
After making $43.5 million in its debut, Weapons saw its ticket sales drop just 43 percent weekend-to-weekend (per The Numbers), and it has added another $25 million to its domestic total since Friday – allowing it to easily stay in the number one spot at the box office ahead of both Nisha Ganatra’s Freakier Friday and the aforementioned Nobody 2. It has made $89 million to date, which is good enough for it to already be the fourteenth most successful release in the United States and Canada of 2025, having surpassed the $87.2 million that Mark Webb’s Snow White made during its full 11 week stretch on the big screen.
While both Weapons and Sinners are both huge box office wins, the financial advantage that the former has over the latter is a matter of budget: the Ryan Coogler title cost “$90 million-plus” (per Deadline) while Cregger had $38 million to work with. The crime/vampire feature finished its domestic run making an awesome $278.6 million – easily the most successful original movie of 2025 thus far and fifth highest grossing overall – and it will be very exciting to see just how high Weapons can ultimately climb.
In addition to all of the money that Weapons has made at home, it has also made $49 million in ticket sales from foreign markets, which brings its worldwide total to date up to $138 million. That’s good enough for the title to break into the Top 25 of 2025.
Of course, one doesn’t need an advanced degree or decades of experience studying the film industry to understand what has happened here: Weapons is a great movie that was promoted exceptionally well and built excitement at the right pace. And after people saw it and loved it during its opening weekend, they told their friends and family about how terrific it is, and a good number of those folks decided to take a trek to their local cinema in the last three days to witness it for themselves. And certainly hurting nothing is the fact that it’s a ride to experience with a packed crowd: when the climax hits, I felt the room come alive during my screening.
Where things go from here will be fascinating. August being August, there aren’t a great number of big titles set to drop into theaters in the next few weeks, and that could easily result in Weapons continuing to hold the title of “#1 Movie In America” until the calendar flips over to September. After that, spooky season will kick off with Michael Chaves’ The Conjuring: Last Rites, but Weapons may still hang around in the Top 5 for an extended stretch of time.
Nobody 2 Easily Outperforms Its Predecessor But Has To Settle For Third Place
Movie fans will remember that Ilya Naishuller’s Nobody arrived on the big screen in the midst of theaters just starting to reopen in early 2021, and within that context, the action feature starring Better Call Saul‘s Bob Odenkirk actually did quite well. It made made for just $16 million, and it finished its time at the box office making a solid $57.5 million worldwide.
Four years later, the context of the landscape is quite different, and while Nobody 2 has managed to get off to a better start than its predecessor, the results aren’t exactly overwhelming. The new action movie made more money than the original in its first three days ($9.3 million vs. $6.8 million), but it failed to hit eight figures and had to settle for a third place finish behind last weekend’s two big new releases (In addition to Weapons‘ impressive 43 percent drop, Freakier Friday also saw a soft weekend-to-weekend dip in ticket sales of 49 percent, adding $14.5 million to its coffers).
The silver lining? Nobody 2 did not cost a lot of money to make. While it was more expensive than its predecessor with a $25 million price tag (per Variety), the film should be able to make more than enough money in the coming weeks to earn a profit (though it’s maybe not the safest bet right now to inspire another bite at the apple with a second sequel).
Looking ahead, next Friday will see the arrival of a number of smaller titles with some interesting stories/names attached, including Ron Howard‘s Eden, Ethan Coen’s Honey Don’t, and Yu Yang’s Ne Zha 2 (which is the highest grossing film of 2025, having made $2 billion during its release in China). Be sure to head back here to CinemaBlend next week to see how all of these new titles end up disrupting the box office Top 10.