The furred, hooved and shelled heroes of DC League of Super-Pets proved their mettle in spite of the summer box-office slowdown, as the Warner Bros. animated featured pulled in a respectable $23 million No. 1 domestic opening domestically, closing out the first month for cinema releases to surpass $1 billion since December 2019 (at $1.13B). The star-studded family pic led by Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart and directed by LEGO franchise writer Jared Stern snagged $18.4M internationally for a starting leap of $41.4M total across 64 markets (76% of its international footprint).
Super-Pets leapt into theatrical action with mostly positive reviews from critics, and has since held at 72% Tomatometer from Rotten Tomatoes with a slight dip on MetaCritic to a 58 Metascore (26 critic reviews) but a 6.7 audience rating. Audiences attending the film’s 4,314 theatrical engagements have responded positively as well, ranking the pic an A- on CinemaScore.
The WB release comes in not far behind Universal/DreamWorks’ spring release The Bad Guys, which opened at $23.95M in March and has racked up $96.7M domestically ($245.7M worldwide).
Super-Pets took the lead ahead of Jordan Peele’s latest pic Nope in its second weekend ($18.5M) and Thor: Love and Thunder in its fourth ($13.1M). Another Universal offering, the COVID-delayed Minions: The Rise of Gru is holding on strong at No. 4 after five weekends, taking $10.8M stateside and sitting on a domestic cume of $320M ($710M worldwide), which puts it on track to surpass the first Minions outing (2015, $336M), but it has a bit of nefarious work ahead to catch up to the franchise’s top grosser, Despicable Me 2 (2013), which hit $326M after its fifth weekend and went on to gross $251.6M domestically ($543.2M worldwide).
[Sources: BoxOfficeMojo, Deadline]
