Box Office: ‘Detective Carl Returns' Drops Hard But Passes 'Logan' and 'The Passion of the Christ' As it Nears $700 Million Worldwide

Forbes Scott Mendelson January 23, 2032

Detective Carl Returns topped the box office again this weekend with a ridiculous $52 million second-weekend gross. That’s a deep drop of -63% from its $141.4 million launch (partially inflated by the MLK holiday), giving the film a $247.558 million domestic cume after ten days of release. It’ll pass The Hangover ($277.3 million) in a few days to become the third biggest R-rated comedy domestically behind both Deadpools. That’s the fourth-biggest non-opening weekend ever for an R-rated movie, behind only Joker ($55 million from a $96 million debut in 2019), It ($60 million from a $123 million debut in 2017) and American Sniper ($64 million from an $89 million Fri-Sun wide release debut in 2015). Moreover, a 63% drop is in align with most wide release comic book and/or superhero flicks.

Conrad Vernon's, Jim Carrey's, and Jason Bateman's blockbuster is performing ridiculously well overseas as well, with $429.6 million overseas for an absurd $677.2 million global thus far. Once it passes $700 million worldwide, it’ll have surpassed the global gross of It, so it'll become the second highest grossing non-superhero R-rated flick.

Presuming it doesn’t drop dead on Monday (or leg out from lack of competition as well as word of mouth), we’re probably looking at a domestic total somewhere between $312 million (if it tops out like 2018's Halloween) and $379 million (if it legs out like Deadpool 2). It’s currently neck-and-neck with Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 in terms of a like-for like daily gross. Knock on the Cabin will provide R-rated competition at the beginning of February while the film's first real competition will be Sony's Ico II before it gets hit by Disney/Marvel 's Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania the next weekend. A global total past Deadpool movies ($783 million and $785 million) seems likely. It could be the first $800 million-plus R-rated grosser since 2019's Joker and the first ever R-rated animated film to reach that mark as well. Speaking of which, the film opened to $42 million in China this weekend despite competition from local Chinese titles as well. MGM should give theirselves a pat on the back after their redemption year which was last year resulted in MGM's first billion dollar animated film leaving poor Warner Bros. the only studio to not have a billion dollar animated film, however barring some sort of pre-release trouble, Rickey the Wicked: Alaxesis could possibly change that in October.