28 YEARS LATER | ELIO openings | Where we are now | June 20 to 22, 2025
Opening weekend box office, charts and commentary.
The current weekend: June 20 to 22, 2025
1) 28 Years Later opening
- This is an excellent opening for the 3rd episode in a horror series. The weekend figure is above average for the genre, and pending final numbers it's approx. three times the opening of the last episode.
Critics' reviews are sensational (a great Rotten Tomatoes score), and the audience rating is excellent for a horror picture (a B CinemaScore):
- The sequel is coming 18 years after 28 Weeks Later in 2007. A hot horror series generally moves faster than this, returning in 2 to 3 years (the average layoff for horror sequels is 37 months).
But originality is this story’s strength and it's aged well. The long layoff has had no negative impact; in fact, it’s given the sequel time to add a new younger age group to the audience.
2) Elio opening
- This is a weak opening for a new Pixar movie. These would be solid numbers for another original animation film, but this is Pixar, and by Pixar's remarkable standard, the opening is well below average both as a single-episode release or as the launch of a new series.
It’s the lowest start in Pixar’s history (Elemental opened to $29.6 million in June 2023, and the first Toy Story did $29.1m in November 1995).
- Critic's reviews are excellent but not quite at the level of previous Pixar pictures. The audience score, though, is outstanding (an A CinemaScore). Out of Pixar's last 8 releases, 7 have received an A or A+, and the other one received an A-. That’s superb:
- Pixar movies hold up particularly well after opening, averaging an excellent 3.9x to 4.0x domestic multiple (i.e., they finish with 3.9x to 4.0x of the opening weekend BO).
Elio would need to do a 6x or 7x multiple to put it in the league of Pixar’s other low-performing titles (A Bug’s Life $363m worldwide in 1998; The Good Dinosaur $332m in 2015; Onward $142m during the worst of the pandemic). Disney marketing does not miss a beat, but we do not see that sort of run coming.
The next Pixar release is Hoppers In March 2026. ”An animal lover uses technology that places her consciousness into a robotic beaver to uncover mysteries within the animal world beyond her imagination.”
Where we are now
- 28 Years' opening is impressive and it's another industry series high, but these are not gigantic horror numbers (Final Destination opened to $51.6 million last month). Thus far in 2025, the franchises are having a very good-to-mixed year. There have been…
several excellent performances with series highs (Lilo & Stitch, How to Train Your Dragon, Final Destination, and 28 Years);
several solid performances (Mission: Impossible, Captain America, and Paddington);
and a couple of misses (Ballerina and Karate Kid).
- This weekend’s BO total is relatively soft compared with last year and with the pre-pandemic years. Moviegoing momentum naturally ebbs & flows, and right now it’s ebbing, before it bounces back over the next two weekends.
On Wednesday we’re going to follow up with Elio and 28 Years. We want to provide more context for Pixar’s films and series, and we want to explain more about the intervals between horror sequels and how they impact the genre.
Our last two posts were:
THE WEDNESDAY CHARTS | Original non-series films update | June 18, 2025 here
HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON live-action | THE MATERIALISTS openings | Where we are now | June 13 to 15, 2025 weekend here
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