Battle at the Box Office 12/17
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse, riding a wave of massive hype and universal acclaim from critics easily took the top at the box office over the weekend.
Into the Spider-Verse took in $35.4 million for the biggest animated opening weekend ever for December, beating Sing’s $35.2 million (Sing did hit on a Wednesday before Christmas, so it’s full opening was over $55 million). It’s way below Venom’s opening of $80 million though but nothing about Venom’s performance makes a lick of sense, especially overseas. For all Marvel movies ever, it’s sitting between Daredevil and Blade II as far as openings. Word of mouth is exceptionally strong, getting an A+ on Cinemascore, so it should remain in the top of the box office for a while this holiday season.
Clint Eastwood’s The Mule was surprisingly strong in second place with $17.2 million. It’s Clint’s third-best opening as a director and his second best as an actor and up $5 million from his other movie this year, The 15:17 to Paris.
The Grinch remains a holiday powerhouse at the box office, dropping to third but it hasn’t dropped out of the top 3 in its six weeks out and only dropped 23% from last weekend. It also beat Ralph Breaks the Internet for the first time since Ralph was released, as that movie dropped to fourth with $9.5 million. The Grinch has made $239 million domestic and over $372 million worldwide. It’s also the third highest grossing Holiday movie domestically of all time, behind Home Alone and the live action Grinch starring Jim Carrey.
Although it was in the top 5, Mortal Engines was an utter disaster, only making $7.5 million off a budget well over $100 million. It made $34 million worldwide for a grand worldwide total of $42 million but it’s going to have rely pretty much entirely on international grosses to even come close to breaking even, which will be difficult with heavy hitters like Aquaman (which has already made over $261 million worldwide), Bumblebee and Mary Poppins hitting this week. As far as YA Adaptation openings go, it’s down near forgotten bombs like Beautiful Creatures and Cirque Du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant.
Just outside the top 10, Deadpool 2’s family-friendly rebranding, Once Upon a Deadpool, took in $2.6 million. Fox is adding Once Upon a Deadpool’s take to Deadpool 2’s box office total so the superhero sequel is now at just over $322 million.
The Per Theater average went to If Beale Street Could Talk, the latest from Moonlight director Barry Jenkins, which made $54,794 on each of the four screens it debuted on.