The first weekend of the year is always pretty sleepy compared to the gangbusters business of the holiday season.  Warner Brothers’ ‘Aquaman’ remains in the #1 spot and is the only movie to make north of $20 million this weekend, with $30.7M. Overseas, it has become the top-grossing DC Comics movie ever, besting ‘The Dark Knight Rises’.  It is now being eyed to become the first DC Comics movie to beat $1 billion!  This is ‘Aquaman”s third domestic weekend and it is expected to remain on top next weekend, as the new movies aren’t expected to challenge it.  This would mark the first time since ‘The Dark Knight Rises’ that a Warner Brothers film has been #1 for four weeks in a row.

Columbia Pictures’ horror movie ‘Escape Room’ scared up $18M for second place.  This film was directed by Adam Robitel, who perhaps coincidentally, also helmed ‘Insidious: The Last Key’, which premiered one year ago and was also a decent-sized hit.  ‘Escape Room’ reportedly cost $9M to make, so this is already a solid hit.  Audiences gave it a B via CinemaScore, which is actually great for a horror movie.

Hold overs ‘Mary Poppins Returns’, ‘Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse’ and ‘Bumblebee’ round out the Top Five.  ‘Into the Spider-Verse’ held on a little stronger than ‘Bumblebee’, which slid past it on the way down.  Despite positive reaction from critics and viewers, ‘Bumblebee’ looks to be the weakest entry in the ‘Transformers’ franchise.

TOP FIVE

  1. Aquaman (Warner Brothers) – $30.7M
  2. Escape Room (Columbia Pictures) – $18M
  3. Mary Poppins Returns (Disney) – $15.8M
  4. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (Sony) – $13M
  5. Bumblebee (Paramount) – $12.8M

January is traditionally not a big month for opening movies.  Next weekend sees the release of comedy-drama ‘The Upside’ starring Bryan Cranston, Kevin Hart, and Nicole Kidman, tearjerker ‘A Dog’s Way Home’, and the Keanu Reeves/Alice Eve sci-fi drama ‘Replicas’.  None of these is expected to rival ‘Aquaman’, but it’s possible that they may do well enough to rank.  Check back to see how things go!

Source: Deadline