Straight Outta Compton dominated the box office for the second weekend in a row, ensuring that every other movie in the top 10 that doesn’t feature Tom Cruise trembled in its mighty wake. Anyone with their finger on the cultural pulse foresaw the N.W.A. biopic doing well, but it’s performing above and beyond all expectations.

FilmWeekendPer Screen
1Straight Outta Compton$26,760,000 (-55.5)$8,846$111,483,000
2Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation$11,700,000 (-31.9)$3,399$157,763,000
3Sinister 2$10,633,000$3,844$10,633,000
4Hitman: Agent 47$8,200,000$2,515$8,200,000
5The Man From U.N.C.L.E.$7,420,000 (-44.7)
$2,020$26,637,000
6American Ultra$5,500,000$1,980$5,500,000
7The Gift$4,300,000 (-33.9)$1,867$31,053,000
8Ant-Man$4,088,000 (-25.6)$2,028$164,524,000
9Minions$3,710,000 (-27.9)$1,667$319,965,000
10Fantastic Four$3,650,000 (-55.3)$1,414$49,625,000

 

With $111 million in the bank after only 10 days, Straight Outta Compton could stop selling tickets tomorrow and still be a massive success and one of the biggest hits of the summer. With a $26 million second weekend, the film is already showing some strong legs that (maybe, possibly) could take it to $200 million. $150 million is a sure thing at this point, so the big question is just how far it’ll go beyond that. We’re officially in the dog days of summer, so it’s not like there are many movies that are going to stand in its way. After all, three newcomers died at its feet.

The most successful of the newbies was Sinister 2, which opened with a small $10 million in third place. That small opening isn’t as devastating as you’d think — this is a horror movie with a modest budget and it’s going to have a long shelf life beyond its theatrical run. Sure, the first film opened to $18 million and went on to gross $48 million, but this is more disappointing than outright disastrous.

More disastrous is the fourth place, $8 million opening of Hitman: Agent 47, which cost significantly more than Sinister 2. This should be a lesson for Hollywood: don’t reboot a video game movie series less than a decade after the first movie did similarly awful business. Seriously. Who thought this was a good idea?

The biggest new release flop of the weekend was American Ultra, which ambled into sixth place with only $5 million. The film wasn’t massively expensive so we can’t count it among the biggest disasters of the summer, but this is proof that Jesse Eisenberg and non-Twilight Kristen Stewart simply don’t have drawing power on their own. They’re likable actors who often appear in good movies, but very little about American Ultra’s marketing made the film itself look particularly good.

The rest of the top 10 fell where you’d expect. Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation clung to second place like Tom Cruise clings to an airplane, grossing $11 million and reaching $157 million. It’s still a long trek to the gross of Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, but it can make it if it tries really hard. The other success stories include The Gift, which has been a quiet little sleeper, Ant-Man, which will soon match the grosses of the first Captain America and Thor movies, and Minions, which is still chasing Inside Out but looking good in the process.

That leaves The Man From U.N.C.L.E. and Fantastic Four, the latter of which should exit the top 10 as of next week. Although The Man From U.N.C.L.E. is technically the bigger bomb of the two, Josh Trank’s troubled superhero movie has a Pig Pen-esque cloud of nastiness following it wherever it goes. The actual numbers may say otherwise, but culturally, it is the disaster of 2015. Jupiter Ascending says thanks.

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