‘Bad Boys For Life’ came out on top again for the third weekend in a row, earning an additional $17.7 million. That’s a decent amount for the third weekend, but it’s not that high for a #1 movie. The Super Bowl has claimed most of the pop culture attention for the weekend. Due to the big game, the studios pretty much avoided releasing a major picture.
Counterprogramming can work during this frame. The highest-grossing Super Bowl weekend on record was 2008, when the ‘Hannah Montana Live’ movie was released, drawing teen and tween girls. But alternative audiences didn’t really feel compelled by any of this year’s offerings. Regardless, this weekend’s box office is up 17% from last year’s.
‘1917’ and ‘Dolittle’ are again in the #2 and #3 spots. This week’s two new releases fizzled out. Orion Picture’s horror movie ‘Gretel & Hansel’ scraped in $6.05M to land at #4.
Audiences don’t seem very keen on horror lately, and ‘Gretel & Hansel’s poor C- CinemaScore indicates that those that saw it didn’t like it. But at least the reception was better than the F’s given to ‘The Grudge’ and ‘The Turning’. The biggest audience for horror is typically teenage girls, but for whatever reason, this one is drawing just slightly more males than females and adults of both sexes over 25 outnumber the younger attendees.
Last week’s new release, ‘The Gentlemen’ made $6.01M, just barely beating out ‘Jumanji: The Next Level’s $6M to take the #5 spot.
The week’s other wide release, the action-thriller ‘The Rhythm Section’ crashed at #10 with a dreadful $2.8M.
TOP FIVE
- Bad Boys For Life (Sony) – $ 17.7M
- 1917 (Amblin/Universal) – $9.66M
- Dolittle (Universal) – $7.7M
- Gretel & Hansel (Orion Pictures/United Artists) – $6.1M
- Jumanji: The Next Level (Sony) – $6M
Things will pick up next weekend, as the first comic book movie of the year arrives, with ‘Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn)’. (You may have noticed that this film is not being marketed in TV ads under its verbose real title, but rather as “Harley Quinn in Birds of Prey.”) This picture is expected to open to north of $50M in the U.S. and Canada.
Keep in mind, it’s rated-R unlike most comic book movies, but so was ‘Joker’ and that did amazingly well. Then again, that wasn’t sold as a comic book movie, but an arty psychological drama. But in ‘Birds of Prey’s favor, the early online buzz is surprisingly, overwhelmingly positive.
Just as an aside, the global box office is expected to take a hit of about $1 billion due to the spread of the Corona Virus in parts of Asia, including China. Public celebrations including Chinese New Year are being canceled, and that will impact the turn out for movies, although what’s really being hurt are homegrown projects, not so much Hollywood imports.
Check back to see how things work out next week!
Source: Deadline
