Battle at the Box Office 12/16
Jumanji: The Next Level continued the box office dominance of its predecessor and opened well above expectations just shy of $60 million.
Jumanji: The Next Level took in $59.3 million, which far surpasses Welcome to the Jungle’s opening in 2017 of $36.2 million. The big factor for The Next Level will be if it can maintain its box office like Welcome to the Jungle did. After coming out on December 20th, 2017, Welcome to the Jungle weathered The Last Jedi storm and was still doing gangbusters deep into January and became Sony’s highest-grossing film ever domestically with over $404 million. The Next Level obviously faces Rise of Skywalker this coming weekend but word of mouth is strong and it might be able to hold out against Star Wars’ first weekend or two and get some business back after everyone has seen Rise of Skywalker. Worldwide, Jumanji: The Next Level as taken in $152 million so far (it opened in China and a few other markets last weekend), giving it a grand total of $211.5 million.
Frozen II dropped to second with another $19 million, bringing it to over $366 million domestic and over $1.032 billion worldwide. It is now the 8th highest-grossing animated film of all time worldwide.
Knives Out remained strong despite dropping to third place. It only fell 36% from last weekend and took in another $9.1 million, bringing it to $78.8 million domestic and over $162 million worldwide.
Richard Jewell did not fare quite as well as the top 3, opening to fourth place with $4.7 million and finding itself in the top 50 worst openings of all time for movies in 2,500 to 2,999 theaters at #38. It is easily one of the worst openings ever for Clint Eastwood as a director sitting between Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil and Bronco Billy.
Black Christmas also did not fare very well, although it’s one saving grace is that it’s a Blumhouse joint so it didn’t cost anything to make, although it was still, like Richard Jewell, one of the worst openings of all time. The movie made $4.2 million for fifth place but only cost $5 million, so it will probably at least break even but word of mouth was terrible with a D+ Cinemascore, so it could potentially take a massive nosedive this coming weekend, especially as Star Wars takes all the box office capital.
In limited release both Uncut Gems and Bombshell dominated the Per Theater counts. Uncut Gems edged out Bombshell, making $107,448 in each of its five theaters (which is the biggest Per Theater average ever for distributor A24) but Bombshell was not far behind with $79,254 in each of its four theaters.