1. Dog Man (review)- $36M
The half-man/half-dog toppled the sexbot as Dreamworks’ animated Dog Man opened with $36M. The film is a spinoff of 2017’s Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie which had a $23M debut. It’s also the second highest-grossing January opening ever for an animated movie behind Kung Fu Panda 3 in 2016. Author Dav Pilkey is building a multimedia empire here. Captain Underpants was also turned into a Netflix series, and we could see a similar expansion with Dog Man. Could a crossover movie be far behind?
2. Companion (review)- $9.5M
The first quarter of the year is usually prime time for horror films, but Companion is struggling right out of the gate. The Drew Hancock-directed thriller starring Jack Quaid and Sophie Thatcher opened with just $9.5M despite strong reviews across the board. Perhaps all of the early secrecy about the plot was a factor? Latter trailers gave away the film’s twist but perhaps it was too late and audiences stayed away. On the plus side, the $10M budget assures the film should still perform well overall.
3. Mufasa: The Lion King– $6.1M/$229.5M
4. One of Them Days– $6M/$34.4M
5. Flight Risk– $5.6M/$20.9M
Ouch. Mel Gibson’s Mark Wahlberg-starring thriller Flight Risk took a massive nosedive, dropping from the top spot all the way to #5 with $5.6M. That’s a 51% drop in its second week, possibly driven by the poor word-of-mouth. Or it could be that with Americans grieving two airplane crashes in the span of a few days, audiences did not want to watch a movie set inside of a plane, and that would be understandable.
6. Sonic the Hedgehog 3– $3.2M/$230.5M
7. Moana 2– $2.8M/$453.8M
8. A Complete Unknown– $2.1M/$66.6M
9. The Brutalist– $1.8M/$12.1M
10. Den of Thieves 2: Pantera– $1.6M/$34.4M
