Kingdom Of The Planet Of The Apes Just Passed A Big Box Office Milestone

Despite Hollywood's box office haul being generally disappointing this year, the "Planet of the Apes" franchise is proving to be surprisingly resilient. 

Seven years after "War for the Planet of the Apes" concluded the Caesar trilogy on a critical high note as one of the most significant blockbusters of the decade, director Wes Ball's "Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes" has managed to hold strong and bring back the same audience that turned the previous films into box office success stories. To that end, the film crossed a major milestone this past weekend, sailing past the $300 million mark worldwide on what was otherwise an abysmal few days for theaters.

On its fourth weekend in theaters, "Kingdom" pulled in another $8.9 million, staying at fourth place on the charts. It landed just below John Krasinski's "IF" ($10.5 million) and well above Universal's "The Fall Guy" ($4.1 million), which has already been on VOD for two weeks. For what it's worth, both of those movies are also holding quite well week-to-week. With another solid $15.2 million weekend in the books internationally, the latest "Planet of the Apes" film has now amassed $140.1 million domestically, on top of $197.1 million internationally, for a running total of $337.2 million.

"The Garfield Movie" topped the charts with a $14 million haul in its second weekend, but that's a sad figure for a number one movie in the midst of the summer movie season. In fact, the weekend overall was one of the worst weekends at the box office that we've seen in the past 25 years. But amongst the awfulness, "Apes" continued to thrive. It may not be the $1 billion hit the industry is praying will come sooner rather than later, but it's sure as heck a welcome win on its own terms.

At this stage, the 2024 box office is lagging 24% behind this same point in 2023. It's going to be another down year for the industry, and it's one that theaters can ill-afford. But between last year's strikes and audience habits changing, this year's fate is all but sealed. Unfortunately, that's put a lot of unfair pressure on the summer box office to overdeliver with a relatively weak slate. That hasn't happened, leaving many theater owners to search for answers, so this movie is truly one of the few bright spots in a rough year.

"Kingdom" is unlikely to catch any of the installments from the previous trilogy, but it will finish much closer to "War for the Planet of the Apes ($490.7 million worldwide) and "Rise of the Planet of the Apes" ($481.8 million worldwide) than it will "Dawn of the Planet of the Apes" ($710 million worldwide). That said, Ball's film should have no issue clearing $400 million worldwide. Against a $160 million budget and with far less help from China, that's a damn fine result. It should be enough to convince Disney to pull the trigger on a sequel sooner rather than later.

Now, whether that sequel can break out like "Dawn" did in 2014 is a much bigger, complicated question. We know for sure that "Kingdom" planted the seeds for a sequel, should the powers that be decide that's something they would like to explore. At this point, it feels like a safe bet. Apes together strong, as it were.

"Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes" is in theaters now.