‘The Emoji Movie’ Delivers A Number Two At The Box Office

Critics and online fans may have reviled the movie, but that didn’t prevent American audiences from showing up for Sony Animation’s The Emoji Movie, which opened in the number two position behind Dunkirk.

The film debuted with an estimated $25.7 million from 4,075 theaters, easily topping the launch of Sony’s last animation release, Smurfs: The Lost Village, which opened with $13.2M in April. Emoji could finish its domestic run in the $60-75M range.

Emoji’s performance is respectable, especially considering the strong negative sentiment toward the project from the moment it was first announced. But it should also be noted that Emoji isn’t the box office smash that Sony had likely envisioned when it first greenlit the film. Sony was looking for their version of Lego Movie or Wreck-It Ralph — a broadly appealing and playful film that uses a basic element of popular culture. What they ended up with is the weakest launch ever for an animated film opening in 4,000-plus theaters.

On the other end of the spectrum, Universal’s Despicable Me 3 continued its scorching box office pace and easily topped $800M globally this weekend.

In its 5th U.S. weekend, the film finished in seventh place with $7.7M, lifting its domestic total to $230.4M. But as noted before, the big story with this film is its foreign box office.

Internationally, DM3 added an extra $36.1M this weekend, driving its foreign total up to $588.8M. China leads the offshore markets with $145M, while the film held at no. 1 in Japan for the second weekend in a row ($17.6M total) and no. 1 in Argentina for the fifth weekend in a row ($22.3M total)

Globally, the Illumination-produced movie has earned $819.2M to date, passing Wonder Woman to take the no. 4 spot for 2017’s biggest worldwide grossers.