Battle at the Box Office 1/14

The Upside dramatically outperformed expectations at the box office and took over the top spot from Aquaman, preventing the King of Atlantis from spending four weeks in a row at #1.

The Kevin Hart/Bryan Cranston starring The Upside took in $19.6 million and gave distributor STX their first ever #1 opening weekend.  It’s the ninth-best opening for Bryan Cranston and it ranks 20th for Kevin Hart.  The film is a remake of the French movie The Intouchables, which made over $426 million worldwide back in 2012.

Aquaman dropped to second but it’s still extremely strong, especially worldwide.  Aquaman took in another $17.3 million but the real story is it’s total worldwide gross, which crossed over the $1 billion mark.  It’s the only DC Extended Universe film to cross $1 billion and it’s now the second highest grossing DC Comics film of all time, topping The Dark Knight and only being topped by The Dark Knight Rises and there’s a good chance it could top that movie as well and become the highest grossing DC film worldwide of all time.

A Dog’s Way Home took third place, meeting the studio’s expectations with $11.3 million.  That opening puts it above last year’s Alpha and around the same territory of other dog movies like Max from 2015 and Because of Winn-Dixie from 2005.

Into the Spider-Verse and Escape Room rounded out the top 5, with the latter dropping just over 50% from last week’s opening weekend with $8.9 million.

Further down the list, On the Basis of Sex jumped into the top 10 thanks to its nationwide expansion.  The Ruth Bader Ginsburg biopic went from 16th to eighth with $6.2 million.  Bohemian Rhapsody also saw a bump thanks to it’s Golden Globe win, up 35% from last weekend and making another $3.2 million.  It’s made over $198 million domestic and over $774 million worldwide.

Debuting in twelfth place, Keanu Reeves’ Replicas was a disaster with only $2.5 million.  Adjusted for inflation, it’s the 16th worst opening of all time for a movie opening between 2,000 and 2,500 theaters, sitting between Chasing Mavericks and Victor Frankenstein.

The Per Theater average went to Amazon’s Cold War, which is in its fourth weekend of release in 10 theaters and made $8,755 per theater.