Only in Hollywood can a film that grossed a whopping $96 million in a weekend could be considered a disappointment, but that is what we have here with this weekend’s No. 1 film, Warner Bros./DC’s Justice League. People are saying it’s a letdown, considering that earlier this week, it was expected to make somewhere around $120 million this weekend. And that’s much lower than the $166 million that last year’s Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice made in its opening weekend (and no one liked that film).
But then again $96 million sure isn’t chump change, but Justice League had some problems that it had to overcome including DC’s lousy track record of their films and a very problematic shoot in involving extensive rewrites and reshoots during post-production.
As a result, it’s very likely that expectations were very low on the film and drove down the number of people willing to see it, except for the devoted hardcore fans. The reviews so far haven’t been exactly horrible, but they haven’t been great altogether. Most of them have been those “Hey, it wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be”-type of reviews. But whether the film will match Batman vs. Superman‘s $330 domestic gross and $873 million worldwide totals is up in the air at this point.
The not-so-surprise second place with $27 million was the Lionsgate family drama Wonder, which was projected to do a lot better than originally thought, mainly because of the popularity of book. The film which it is based on has been made required reading in some public schools. Marvel’s Thor: Ragnarok dropped down to third place, but still with strong box office legs at $21 million this weekend, as well as $247 million in the U.S. and $738 million globally.
Both Daddy’s Home 2 and Murder on the Orient Express dropped 50 percent from last week but Orient Express, as expected, is performing very strongly overseas with a $120 million worldwide so far.
The Sony animated film, The Star, about the first Christmas, made just $10 million this weekend, but it was going up against some heavy competition. And more unfortunately for the film, Disney/Pixar’s Mexican culture-themed latest project, Coco opens this holiday weekend, which no doubt will get the lion’s share of the family filmgoing audience this coming weekend giving The Star even tougher competition to face.
However, both the A24’s indie drama Lady Bird and Fox Searchlight’s Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri increased substantially from last week since both films opened in on more screens with Three Billboards moving up from 27th place last week to 9th, with the second highest per screen average after Justice League.
However, the Denzel Washington legal thriller Roman J. Israel, Esq. had the third-highest per screen average in its opening limited engagemant on 4th screens with over $16,000 per screen.
Full list:
1) Justice League WB $96,000,000
2) Wonder LGF $27,050,000
3) Thor: Ragnarok BV $21,786,000 Total: $247,382,170
4) Daddy’s Home 2 Par. $14,800,000 Total: $50,576,447
5) Murder on the Orient Express Fox $13,800,000 Total: $51,728,362
6) The Star Sony $10,000,000
7) A Bad Moms Christmas STX $6,890,000 -Total: $50,912,155
8) Lady Bird A24 $2,529,915 Total: $4,702,390
9) Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri FoxS $1,115,000 Total: $1,549,225
10) Jigsaw LGF $1,070,000 Total: $36,450,233
11) Blade Runner 2049 WB $600,000 Total: $89,250,463
12) Tyler Perry’s Boo 2! A Madea Halloween LGF $485,000 Total: $46,663,340
