Battle at the Box Office 11/12
The Grinch returned to theaters after almost two decades and took the top spot at the box office while the other new releases mostly struggled.
Illumination’s take on the classic Dr. Seuss holiday classic took in $66 million over the weekend, which was the third largest animated opening for November all-time behind The Incredibles and Frozen (it was in fact only about $1 million away from topping the latter juggernaut). It was behind the previous big Dr. Seuss adaptation, The Lorax, which made $70.2 million its opening weekend. The Jim Carrey live-action adaptation from 2000 took in $55 million when it debuted but, adjusted for inflation, that would have $93.4 million in today’s dollars. Worldwide, The Grinch made $12.7 million and has not really opened in any major territories yet, hitting the likes of Japan and China in mid-December.
Bohemian Rhapsody dropped less than 40% from last week and took in another $30.8 million and putting it over $100 million in only 10 days. It’s the third highest grossing musical biopic of all time behind Straight Outta Compton and Walk the Line and could potentially take the top spot if it takes in another $61 million.
Overlord took third place but was below studio expectations with $10.1 million. Paramount was looking for something more in the mid-teens. It’s the tenth best opening for a JJ Abrams-produced film but well below movies like 10 Cloverfield Lane, Super 8 and Cloverfield, which made 2x, 3x and 4x what Overlord made in their opening weekends respectively.
The Nutcracker and The Girl in the Spider’s Web rounded out the top 5, with the latter meeting the studio’s low expectations with $8 million but $4 million below what David Fincher’s adaptation of Dragon Tattoo made in 2011 and it’s barely above the two sequel adaptations from Sweden, which were only in around 200 theaters each.
Nobody’s Fool took a pretty steep tumble, going from third to seventh this past weekend with $6.5 million.
Internationally, Venom had, as anticipated, a huge Chinese opening, taking in $111 million which makes it the best opening ever in China for Sony and the 2nd largest superhero film opening ever for China. The Chinese opening brings Venom to over $673 million total worldwide.
For the Per Theater average, The Grinch also took that title, making $15,938 in each of the 4,141 theaters. About a thousand dollars behind was the new Hugh Jackman political drama The Front Runner, which took in $14,000 on each of the 4 screens it opened on.