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Glass Movie.jpg

Box Office Report: The Dragon Ball is the Twist

By Kayleigh Donaldson | Film | January 20, 2019 |

By Kayleigh Donaldson | Film | January 20, 2019 |


Glass Movie.jpg

Weird things happen in the industry during the dry season. January will forever be a dumping ground of sorts for cinematic releases, but there are still some surprises to be found. All predictions pointed towards M. Night Shyamalan’s Glass taking the top spot this weekend, despite bad reviews. The lack of competition helped but there’s also good reason for fans of Unbreakable and Split to want to see how it all ends. Bless you, M. Night and your ability to build up our hopes then dramatically shatter them. Bravo. The film made $40.5m this weekend, and is projected to make about $47m over the four day weekend. That’s a bit short of the $50m Universal were predicting but the film has already doubled its budget domestically. As a bit of a Shyamalan defender (shut up, The Village is a sinfully underrated movie and I will fight you all on it), I’m glad to see him back, even if he remains gloriously messy.

The Upside fell to number 2 with $15.6m, but that’s only a 23% drop from last week so it’s holding on steady during a quiet month. That’s good news for Lantern Entertainment, the successor to The Weinstein Company. Given how much the film was shunted around the release schedule then assumed dead after the original distributor went under, there’s reason for the new company to be optimistic.

Yes, really, a Dragon Ball Z movie made over $10.6m domestically this weekend. From 467 theatres. That’s a $22,821 per screen average. And it’s already made $21m domestically. Damn. Dragon Ball Super: Broly comes courtesy of FUNimation and is hot off the heels of a very commercially successful run in Japan. Anime is kind of like Bollywood cinema in that it’s consistently underestimated by prognosticators of the North American box office results but consistently pulls in big numbers when it gets a proper release. It’s almost like the world doesn’t revolve around English speaking white people or something.

With an extra $10.3m this weekend, Aquaman officially crossed $300m domestically after 5 weeks of release. It’s one of only 5 films to make $1bn in 2018. Not too shabby, eh? Good news for Warner Bros. and the DCEU alike. Can Shazam! keep up the momentum?

The Oscar nominations come out this week so it’s interesting to see those predicted nominees hanging on at the box office long enough to benefit from the upcoming bounce. A Star Is Born is still in theatres after 16 weeks and $204m domestic gross, while Green Book, which just won the PGA top prize, has benefitted from a slow burn release. 10 weeks in and it’s made $41m domestically. Nothing comparable to Lady Gaga’s finest hour but still good in terms of what is required to remain part of the Oscars conversation. Sony Pictures Classics continue to play a smart game in keeping Glenn Close’s Oscar hopes alive with The Wife: Keep the theatre numbers limited but make sure the people who need to see it - those voters - can do so. 23 weeks in and it’s still running. Expect this thing to expand its release once more when Close gets that nomination.

This coming week sees the release of Serenity, not related to the Firefly movie, and The Kid That Would be King, the long awaited new movie by Joe Cornish.

You can check out the rest of the weekend box office here.

What films did you watch this weekend? Let us know in the comments.



Header Image Source: Universal Pictures