Man of Steel, Doing Better Than Expected, Still Might Fall Behind World War Z

It looks like World War Z will have a bigger-than-expected opening weekend at the box office, pushing last week's champ and the biggest June opener of all time--Man of Steel--to #3. This week's #1 movie will undoubtedly be Monsters University, making it the second-biggest opening in Pixar's history. Ironically, the biggest Pixar opening of all time is Toy Story 3, the previous record-holder for the June opening weekend. Monsters University is looking to open at around $75 million--that's a shade better than the $73.9 million that Box Office Mojo was estimating last night. That same set of projections had called for World War Z to make around $46 million and Man of Steel to make $47 million, setting up a dead heat for the #2-3 positions at the box office if the zombie war epic had picked up a little--which it has. So has Man of Steel, incidentally, but word-of-mouth has had a week to get around on that movie and there don't seem to be a ton of people changing their mind. World War Z has had terrible word-of-mouth for months that they've had to overcome, but good reviews and a solid audience score at Rotten Tomatoes are probably helping that. Man of Steel will do around $2 million better than expected, according to Deadline, giving it a $50 million second weekend, but that won't be enough to overcome World War Z, which has surged beyond expectations and is looking like it could potentially make $55 million. If all of this happens and none of the films dip unexpectedly, it won't be the biggest box office weekend of all time by a long shot, but what it will be is the first time any three films have all made $50 million in the same weekend--a strong indicator that it's not just one movie driving all the revenue (like it was last year with The Avengers, which dominated for something like a month and a half over weak competition). Just for fun, below you can check out a brief video chat we had with Monsters University and Dan Vs. star Dave Foley at Comic-Con last year.