Box Office Report: Saint or Sinner?

In the battle of saints versus sinners at this box office, the former won, but still fell short of overtaking one man and his parasite boyfriend.

Three weeks into its domestic release, Venom: The Last Dance is still on top, with its most recent weekend intake bringing $16.2 million. That brings its domestic gross to over $114.8 million so far. So far, its earnings have been considered just kinda okay for Sony. Not to the level of the first two movies but not a total write-off either.

The Best Christmas Pageant Ever is based on a book from the ’70s and is directed by Dallas Jenkins, the guy who brought the world the surprisingly popular Jesus historical series The Chosen. While it’s technically a Christian film, it’s also got some familiar faces in it, like Judy Greer and Pete Holmes. Tis the season for Christmas stuff and this one managed to debut at number two with $11.1 million.

That was good enough to beat Heretic, A24 and Hugh Grant’s horror film about a very different approach to faith. That one earned just over $11 million from a similar number of theatres. Does this mean Jesus wins? That sounds like the setup for Heretic 2.

At number 11 is Elevation, a survival horror thriller starring Anthony Mackie that sounds a lot like A Quiet Place in space. This one grossed $1.185 million from 1,416 locations. Right behind that is Overlord: The Sacred Kingdom, an anime film spinning off from the popular series, with $1.165 million from 621 cinemas. Down in number 19 is the action movie Weekend in Taipei, starring Luke Evans, with $150,000 from 1,021 theatres.

Another Christmas movie opened this past weekend. Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point. It stars Francesca Scorsese and Sawyer Spielberg and had its world premiere at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. Strong reviews were enough to get it to a $73,500 opening weekend gross from 405 theatres. The biggest indie player of the weekend, however, was Bird. Andrea Arnold’s latest film stars Barry Keoghan and Franz Rogowski. As one of the beloved filmmakers of modern British indie cinema, Arnold has a devoted following, and even though it only played in one theatre, Bird earned an impressive $24,104 this past weekend!

This coming week sees the release of Red One, the Santa action movie starring Dwayne Johnson that is 100% real and not an extended BoJack Horseman joke.

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