‘Glass’ didn’t crack and remained on top this weekend, with little competition. The M. Night Shyamalan feature made an additional $16.6M, which isn’t a massive amount, indicating that these next few winter weekends will be rather sleepy at the box office. This amount is significantly lower than ‘Split’s second weekend haul of $25.6M, indicating that ‘Glass’ will probably wind up coming up short in the end. But ‘Glass’ only cost $20 million to make, which was all supplied by Shyamalan, so while ‘Glass’ doesn’t look as though it will be a massive hit, it’s nowhere close to a flop. As stated last weekend, critics have not taken favorably to this film– 36% on Rotten Tomatoes. Opening weekend audiences have it a respectable B CinemaScore, and its audience score on RT is a not-too-shabby 77%.
Feel good dramedy ‘The Upside’ remained at #2, while the only new release to crack the Top Five, ‘The Kid Who Would Be King’ arrived at #3, with $7.1M. In a flip flop of sorts, this family flick, directed by Joe Cornish (‘Attack the Block’) and starring Louis Ashbourne Serkis (the son of Andy Serkis), has been warmly received by critics– 84% on RT– but its audience score is lower, at 74%. Among exiting audience members, ‘The Kid Who Would Be King’ earned a great B+ CinemaScore.
While this film’s budget of $59M isn’t astronomical, at this rate, it doesn’t look as though it will make that back. Outside of the U.S., it only took in $1M. What went wrong? For starters, this is a new property, not a franchise pic and not based on a specific book series. Instead, it is based on the legend of King Arthur, which has not proven enticing to modern audiences, as was demonstrated by the 2017 flop of Guy Ritchie’s ‘King Arthur: Legend of the Sword’. Along with last year’s ‘Robin Hood’, this is further proof that folks these days– even the kids– are weary of these ancient intellectual properties.
Superhero hold-overs ‘Aquaman’ and ‘Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse’ round out the Top Five.
TOP FIVE
- Glass (Universal/BVI/Blumhouse) – $16.6M
- The Upside (STX) – $11.1M
- The Kid Who Would Be King (20th Century Fox) – $7.15M
- Aquaman (Warner Brothers) – $7.06M
- Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (Sony) – $5.5M
Outside of the Top Five, noir thriller ‘Serenity’, starring Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway was a complete miss, earning just $4.2M, and a terrible D+ CinemaScore from the poor unfortunate souls that went to see it in theaters. Critics are in agreement, bestowing it with a dreadful 22% score on RT.
On a more positive note, the Academy Award nominations are boosting the box office for the pictures that are still in theaters. Most noticeably, ‘Green Book’ jumped up by 40%, followed by ‘The Favourite’ (up 38%) and ‘Vice’ (up 26%). ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ and ‘A Star is Born’ also saw minor bumps, but both of those were huge hits and most people that wanted to see them already have.
NOTHING is coming out next week. Well, technically, there will be two new releases, action flick ‘Miss Bala’, directed by Catherine Hardwick and starring Gina Rodriguez, and thriller ‘Arctic’ with Mads Mikkelsen. But neither of those looks to have what it takes to crack the Top Five.
But feel free to check back to see how things go.
Source: Deadline
