1. Coco (review)- $49M/$71.1M
Pixar’s 19th animated feature proved just as reliable as the rest, with Coco opening with $49M through the Thanksgiving holiday and $71M overall. The Mexican-flavored film about a young boy’s quest to become a musician and end a family curse, opened previously in Mexico and immediately broke box office records with $53M. It currently stands at $153M worldwide and, as expected, easily toppled Justice League from the top spot.
2. Justice League– $40.3M/$171.5M
As I said last week, there is good news and bad news about the box office for Justice League.The film fell 57% in its second weekend, which isn’t great especially if you compare it to Wonder Woman’s 43% fall. But it’s not terrible, and audiences do seem to be enjoying the film enough to keep up some decent word-of-mouth buzz, even if critics panned it. It also has $481M worldwide and seems to be rolling right along quite well overseas, so even if the domestic end falls short, the slack should be picked up internationally. If, as some have speculated, that $700M is the break-even point then it should be able to hit and surpass that number. Next week is pretty slow in terms of wide releases so I wouldn’t be shocked if it reclaims the top spot from Coco, but that could be tough.
3. Wonder– $22.3M/$69.4M
Wonder had a tremendous hold in it’s second week, sliding a mere 19%. The combination of family friendly movies (along with Coco) may be the biggest hammer to Justice League‘s numbers. At $69M this is the year’s biggest live-action family drama and given the likely Oscars bump it will receive, probably will stick around for a while.
4. Thor: Ragnarok– $16.7M/$277.4M
5. Daddy’s Home 2– $13.2M/$72.6M
6. Murder On the Orient Express– $13M/$74.2M
7. The Star– $6.8M/$22M
8. A Bad Moms Christmas– $5M/$59.7M
9. Roman J. Israel, Esq. (review)- $4.5M/$6.2M
I don’t know what was to be expected from the legal thriller Roman J. Israel, Esq., but this probably wasn’t it. The film has Denzel Washington in the lead role of an activist attorney who gets into a morally untenable predicament. After opening in only 4 theaters last week Sony expanded it to over 1600 for $4.5M and $6.2M overall, which isn’t good. But there has been so little buzz since it debuted at TIFF, and the reviews, including my own, have skewed towards it being a disappointment. These types of movies are a tough sell, anyway; they really rely on strong word of mouth to succeed. And because this is such an atypical role for Denzel (he’s not “cool” by any stretch) I expect a smaller crowd than usually turns up for a Denzel film.
10. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri– $4.4M/$7.6M
