Battle at the Box Office 12/9

Frozen II remained on top of the box office for the third weekend in a row while the Playmobil movie had one of the worst openings of all time.

Frozen II took in another $35.2 million, bringing it to over $338 million domestic and closing in on a billion worldwide with $920.1 million.  It is currently 13th on both the domestic and worldwide all-time animated grosses lists.

The rest of the top 5 remained in exactly the same positions as last weekend with Knives Out, Ford vs Ferrari, Queen & Slim and A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood.  They all dropped about around 50% from last weekend.  Knives Out has just over $63 million for two weeks out and Ford v Ferrari is closing in on $100 million domestic with $91.2 million for four weeks out.

Dark Waters expanded wide and moved into the top 10 in sixth place with $3.9 million.  The movie expanded into 2,012 theaters after being in 94 last weekend.

The biggest story of the weekend though was the unmitigated disaster of Playmobil.  The movie based on the toyline opened in 2,337 theaters and only made $656,530 for the entire weekend, being beaten by movies like Parasite in its ninth weekend of release and still only playing in 333 theaters.  Opening in 14th place, Playmobil only made $281 in each theater that played it and it joins the ranks of infamous flops like The Oogieloves and Delgo and is now the fourth worst opening of all time for a movie opening in between 2,000 and 2,500 theaters, only being topped by the aforementioned Oogieloves, Delgo and the 10th-anniversary re-release of Saw.  It’s also the worst wide-release opening ever distributor STX Entertainment, who have been in dire straits over the last year or so with a string of flops and other financial issues.

The Per Theater average went to Portrait de la jeune fille en feu, a French drama that took in $33.672 in both of the theaters it opened in.