Box Office Report: Mortal Flopgines

Christmas is coming and the box office is revving up for all those movies you’ll want to take your kids, your cranky grandparents and those family members you hate to see! Big-budgets and Oscar prestige are the name of the game. It’s not unusual to see a superhero movie taking the top spot at any point during 2018, but it’s still encouraging for Sony that Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse opened at number one with around $35.4m. It’s got the most astounding reviews as well as a few critics’ awards under its belt already. Who would have thought that Sony’s Spidey plans would pay off so well in 2018? Between this and Venom making so much money, they may be able to pull it off.

Opening at number 2 is The Mule with $17.2m, which is very strong for a film that only opened in 2588 theatres (1300 less than Spider-Verse) and had little marketing. Bradley Cooper’s vaulting ambition knows no bounds and also fuck Clint Eastwood for what he did to Sondra Locke (RIP).

The Grinch is holding on strong with an extra $11.5m this weekend, bringing its domestic gross to $239m, while Ralph Breaks the Internet is still a solid $21m off making back its $175m budget domestically (currently it’s made about $285m worldwide, so I’m curious to see where this one ends).

Opening at number 5 is Mortal Engines with $7.5m from 3103 theatres. Ouch. I think we all knew this one was going to under-perform but even Robin Hood is breathing a sigh of relief at these numbers (speaking of, that film is 4 weeks in on its domestic release and has yet to gross $30m). I expect Mortal Engines to do better domestically but not by much. I liked the books but I’m still not sure who this movie was for.

Once Upon a Deadpool, Fox’s PG-13 cut of Deadpool 2 that may or may not be testing ground for them to show Disney that a less raunchy version of the character can be done post-acquisition, made a decent $2.6m from 1556 theatres. Re-releases are tough to make serious bank from in general but especially so soon after the film was originally released. This is a novelty for most but money is money and Fox won’t be too mad.

The big indie release this weekend is Barry Jenkins’s If Beale Street Could Talk. The reviews have been stellar and the festival buzz strong but it’s a busy month and Annapurna’s loyalties may lie elsewhere as their big Oscar player, Vice, opens on Christmas Day (their third release of the month, Destroyer, opens on the same day). Still, from 4 theatres it made just under $220k, giving the film the best per-screen average of the week with a stellar $54,794.

This coming week sees the release of Robert Zemeckis’s Welcome to Marwen, the Jennifer Lopez comedy Second Act, the Transformers prequel Bumblebee and the new DC film Aquaman. Spoiler alert: It’s fun!

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

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