July 4th Weekend Movies: ‘F9,’ Other Universal Films Expected To Top Box Office

This Fourth of July weekend will look a lot different at the movie theaters compared to last year. Now that moviegoers are heading back to theaters, sales at the box office are expected to hit record highs since the pandemic began.

Chances are a majority of the people heading to theaters over the holiday weekend will most likely see one of the newly released Universal films, which are expected to land at the top three spots at the box office.

While “F9: The Fast Saga” was released on June 25 and earned $70 million its opening weekend, the DreamWorks Animation movie “The Boss Baby: Family Business” and the Blumhouse film “The Forever Purge” are scheduled to hit theaters on Friday.

For its second weekend in theaters, “F9” is expected to earn $28 million while “The Boss Baby: Family Business” is set to make more than $15 million, and “The Forever Purge” is expected to rake in over $10 million during its opening weekend.

Together the movies make Universal more than $53 million and will mark the fifth time that movies from a major film studio have landed on the top three spots at the domestic weekend box office.

The success of the studio comes after it decided to delay the release of “F9” by a year at the height of the pandemic in 2020. Initially, the move was described as extreme but ended up working its favor.

“In hindsight, it turned out to be a really great decision,” Donna Langley, the chair of Universal Filmed Entertainment Group, said Saturday. “We had a range of scenarios from best to worst, and this is right there as the best.”

While "F9" made $70 million domestically in its opening weekend, it made $400 million globally.