- Spider-Man: No Way Home– $81.5M/$467.3M
In a first for the pandemic era, the $1B mark has been surpassed. No surprise it was Marvel’s Spider-Man: No Way Home that did it. The anticipated sequel fell 69% from last week but still scored $81M, with $37M of that coming on Christmas Day, the third-best number ever.
2. Sing 2 (review)- $23.7M/$41M
Illumination’s sequel Sing 2 hit a high note with $41M following a Wednesday debut. That’s a far cry from the $75M six-day total of Sing just five years ago, but then the competition was a lot steeper this time. Still these are good numbers for Universal, driven by the star power of Reese Witherspoon, Matthew McConaughey, Bono, and more in a true family-friendly offering for the holidays.
3. The Matrix Resurrections (review)- $12M/$22.5M
Audiences chose the blue pill when it comes to The Matrix Resurrections, resulting in a disappointing $22M total over five days. That’s not great. We can probably blame the simultaneous HBO Max release for some of it, but in reality this is a 20-year franchise that had its moment in 1999. I’m not sure there was ever the hype for more that Warner Bros. hoped there would be.
4. The King’s Man (review)- $6.3M/$10M
There are a bunch of reasons why The King’s Man flopped with just $10M over five days of release. They didn’t do a very good job of telling people that it was a prequel to Matthew Vaughn’s wildly popular Kingsman spy movies. It came out with way too much competition around it; this needed to be a January release at best. Because of COVID the release date has shifted multiple times over the last two years. And finally, it’s just not very good, with word-of-mouth mixed.
5. American Underdog– $6.2M
A quiet touchdown was scored with American Underdog, a faith-based account of NFL Hall of Famer and Super Bowl champion Kurt Warner. I expect like the other movies of this genre, it’ll play very well in certain areas and play well for a long time as audiences take their time to see this one. Reviews have been excellent, especially from CinemaScore audiences, so I may go see this one myself.
6. West Side Story– $2.8M/$23.9M
7. Licorice Pizza (review)- $2.3M/$3.6M
Leaping into the top 10 is Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest, Licorice Pizza. Adding 782 theaters to its expansion led to $2.3M and a solid $3K per site average. We’ll have to wait and see if Oscars buzz keeps it around for the long haul, as I hope it will. This is a really great movie, with terrific lead performances by Cooper Hoffman and Alana Haim, not to mention some star power with Bradley Cooper and Sean Penn.
8. A Journal for Jordan (review)- $2.2M
Denzel Washington’s A Journal for Jordan, his first directed movie since Fences, had just $2.2M in its debut weekend. The film, which stars Michael B. Jordan and Chante Adams, had a really quiet release and I’m not sure why that is. You’d think, with Denzel and Jordan’s names attached, there’d be more awards season buzz, but nope. Nada.
9. Encanto– $2M/$88.3M
10. ’83– $1.7M
