‘Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle’ is holding up extremely well with the weekend box office numbers, earning $34.3M in its fourth weekend and hanging in at #1, a position it claimed last week, as ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ began to wind down. ‘Jumanji’, starring Dwayne Johnson, Jack Black, Kevin Hart and Karen Gillan has now earned $291M domestically. If it earns another $12M– which it will, easily– it will surpass ‘Skyfall’ as Sony’s fifth highest-grossing movie, falling behind only the first three Sam Raimi ‘Spider-Man’ movies and last summer’s ‘Spider-Man: Homecoming’. Not bad for a movie that most only had modest expectations for. But this movie is a crowd-pleaser and appeals to males and females of all ages. Excellent word of mouth is driving audience attendance.
The mature-skewing Steven Spielberg picture ‘The Post’ is earning awards recognition and drawing crowds as a result. Viewers have granted it a great “A” CinemaScore. It earned an impressive $22.2M upon going wide with its release. ‘The Post’ stars two of the most respected actors in Hollywood– Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep– delivering their usual strong performances. According to Relish Mix:
“[Moviegoers are] sharing, on exit, how great the performances are, as the social campaign did its job in simply building awareness of this super-cast. For others, The Post is a timely comparison to today’s current events, including the ongoing debate about fake news, an unpredictable President with a low approval rating, and the philosophy of the First Amendment, with plenty of cynical chatter about the state of Hollywood.”
Liam Neeson’s fourth collaboration with director Jaume Collet-Serra after ‘Run All Night’, ‘Unknown’ and ‘Non-Stop’, ‘The Commuter’ took in a decent $16M, good enough for third place on the weekend charts, but the U.S. box office is beside the point. These films are made primarily for the foreign market. (It’s #1 in The Netherlands.)
‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ hovered at #4 this week, with $14.7M, bringing its domestic total to $595M.
Meanwhile, Fox’s splashy musical ‘The Greatest Showman’ continues to chug along, earning an additional $14.5M. This film is nearing $100M total. Chris Aronson of 20th Century Fox distribution, stated, “Moviegoers are discovering this movie. It took them a while. It shows the power of the theatrical experience when people get behind a movie. We had some kindling at the beginning for the movie, but now we have a bonfire going.” The older audience tends to trickle in over time rather than rush out on opening weekend, so this result is expected.
Two thought-to-be anticipated new releases came in well under expectations, the family film ‘Paddington 2’ and action thriller ‘Proud Mary’. Bad word of mouth appears to have sunk ‘Insidious: The Last Key’, last week’s #2 movie, which dropped out of the Top Five altogether.
- Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (Sony) – 4-day: $34.3M
- The Post (20th Century Fox/Dreamworks) – 4-day: $22.2M
- The Commuter (Lionsgate) – 4-day: $16M
- Star Wars: The Last Jedi (Disney) – 4-day: $14.7M
- The Greatest Showman (20th Century Fox) – 4-day: $14.5M
Next week sees the release of war drama ’12 Strong’, crime thriller ‘Den of Thieves’ and romance ‘Forever My Girl’. Check back to see how things work out.
Source: Deadline
