F1 | M3gan 2.0 openings | Apple Original Films | Where we are now | June 27 to 29, 2025 weekend
Opening weekend box office, charts and commentary.
The current weekend: June 27 to 29, 2025
1) F1 opening
- This is an outstanding opening for an original action sports drama. A lot about this movie looks easy, like a sure-fire hit, but it’s not. Race car films and sports dramas have a long and mixed track record. This time, everything is working. Critics' reviews and audience scores are excellent (an A CinemaScore).
This was an expensive picture to make (somewhere between $200 and $300 million), but with impressive international and ancillary business, the film should be very profitable. For Apple+, it will be a stellar streaming title:
- The key to these stories is equally strong action and drama driving the stakes and thrills higher. Brad Pitt is the right lead to play a retired racer who comes back to help the team. Writer Ehren Kruger and director Joseph Kosinski (both Top Gun: Maverick) delivered.
The release is set up for a very good run now, with a boost next weekend from the 4th of July holiday.
Apple Original Films
- This is the fifth wide release from Apple Original Films, each of them distributed in partnership with one of the major studios. (Apple also handles other interesting smaller movies, like the Sundance pick-up and 2021 Academy Award Best Picture winner CODA.) These are their wide releases, all made with A+ talent:
Killers of the Flower Moon, released with Paramount, $159 million WW BO, October 2023. Scorsese directing DiCaprio, De Niro, Lily Gladstone, Jesse Plemons and Brendan Fraser.
Napoleon, released with Sony, $221m WW BO, November 2023. Ridley Scott directing Joaquin Phoenix and Vanessa Kirby.
Napoleon, 72.2% of its box office came from overseas Argylle, released with Universal, $96m WW BO, February 2024. Matthew Vaughn directing a big ensemble cast.
Fly Me to the Moon, released with Sony, $42m WW BO, July 2024. Greg Berlanti directing Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum.
- F1, released with Warner Bros., is going to be the biggest at the box office, by far. This film and its marketing & distribution look like the successful business model Apple has envisioned and wanted to execute for several years.
It's unclear what Apple will do from here. If they can make broad appeal entertainment like this, and control costs (everyone is re-sizing their budgets per the realities of the market), then it will be a productive part of their activities, helping their streaming business, which in turn helps their products and services.
2) M3gan 2.0 opening
- This is a weak opening for the 2nd episode in a horror series, with a steep drop from the first picture's opening. The idea of a child-sized humanoid robot doll powered by AI generated a lot of interest the first time, but that interest has fallen apart.
M3gan 1 was very well received. For 2.0, critics are lukewarm, but audiences like this film better (a B+ CinemaScore, versus a B for #1). With that kind of audience score, nothing appears to be wrong with the movie. The story is struggling to show something new, and fans are moving on.
A M3gan spin-off is due soon, in January 2026, called Soulm8te:
Where we are now
- This week and all of July is the strongest playing time of the year — this is it. F1 is giving the BO a good shot of adrenaline before Jurassic World Rebirth arrives on Wednesday for the long 4th of July weekend, followed by Superman on July 11. Both movies are tracking big, especially Superman.
F1, along with The Materialists, The Phoenician Scheme, and the indie pic Friendship, are also bringing some originality to the lineup, next to the big name franchises that dominate the summer — it’s very healthy for the market.
- On Wednesday we'll have June monthly BO figures. After a strong April and May, June went sideways. We hoped the month would finish down no more than -25% from the pre-pandemic average, and that looks like where it will end up.
Note: Last Wednesday we said that Migration has a sequel in the works. Contrary to "informed speculation" at the time of Migration's release, that’s not the case. This means that the only original animated film during the last 8 years, that has a sequel coming, is Disney/Pixar's Coco. Disney CEO Bob Iger announced it during their last annual shareholder's meeting. Coco 2 is currently in development, with a 2029 target release date. The original point was, original animated movies are struggling at the box office — they certainly are.
Our last two posts were:
THE WEDNESDAY CHARTS | Family films update | Original family stories | Where the genre goes from here | June 25, 2025 here
28 YEARS LATER | ELIO openings | Where we are now | June 20 to 22, 2025 here
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