If time is a flat circle, it’s only fitting that a second Liam Neeson film should rule the US box office during the pandemic. Months after his action thriller “Honest Thief” led the domestic hit list, another Neeson (you guessed it!) Action thriller “The Marksman” topped the charts with $ 3.2 million in ticket sales.
Robert Lorenz directed ‘The Marksman’ about a farmer and retired Marine who lives in Arizona and helps a young boy escape from a Mexican drug cartel. The film, which premiered in 1,975 locations, is set to fetch $ 3.7 million on Monday during the Martin Luther King holiday. Open Road, the distributor behind ‘The Marksman’, also supported ‘Honest Thief’. The film rose to $ 3.7 million in October last year, ending its theatrical series with $ 14 million in the US and $ 28 million worldwide.
“The Marksman” joins the company of “Honest Thief” and Robert De Niro’s “The War With Grandpa” as some of the best-earning box office copies in modern history, emphasizing the bleak reality facing movie theaters amid the country’s latest COVID becomes -19 boom. Overall, about 65% of U.S. theaters remain closed due to the pandemic.
Meanwhile, ‘Wonder Woman 1984’ slipped to second place after winning the (albeit muted) competition for three straight weekends. Warner Bros. did not provide a total of three days, but the studio projects that the superhero successor will deliver will generate $ 2.6 million over the long holiday weekend. However, “Wonder Woman 1984” may drop to third place behind “The Croods: A New Age” when Martin Luther King’s day sales close on Monday. Since it hit Christmas Day, Gal Gadot’s last outing as Diana Prince has earned $ 35 million in the US.
‘Wonder Woman 1984’, a $ 200 million adaptation of DC Comics that was released simultaneously on the new streaming service HBO Max. It will be taken off the platform next Sunday and the film will only be shown in theaters until it reaches its traditional home entertainment window. It is expected to return to the streamer a few months later. Internationally, where HBO Max has yet to launch, the fantastic follow-up brought in $ 5.2 million, increasing foreign revenue to $ 105.9 million, with a global total of $ 141.7 million.
For now, Universal and DreamWorks’ sequel to “The Croods” is in third place, and they earn $ 2.04 million this weekend and want to cross the long weekend by $ 2.9 million. The animated family film improved last week’s returns by 13%, which is impressive as it currently has home entertainment available. Last year, Universal entered into an agreement with major theater chains such as AMC and Cinemark to allow the studio to place new releases on demand after 17 days in theaters. In return, select exhibitors receive an unknown reduction in digital profits. After two months in theaters, “The Croods: A New Age” earned $ 40 million at the domestic box office. Overseas, the film added another $ 2.2 million from 17 countries for an international total of $ 94.7 million and a worldwide pull of $ 134.8 million.
Another universal title, “News of the World” with Tom Hanks, ended up in fourth place with a three-day total of $ 1.05 million and an expected four-day score of $ 1.27 million. The Western drama, which is also available to watch on demand, raised $ 8.72 million on the big screen. Finishing off the top five is Sony’s thriller “Monster Hunter”. The adaptation of the video game with Milla Jovovich raised $ 920,000 this past weekend and would total $ 1.09 million during MLK Day. By Monday, it would have earned $ 9.2 million so far.
Although ‘Promising Young Woman’ falls to a seventh place on the box office charts, the film just dominated social media while the award-winning revenge thriller appeared on the best platforms this weekend. (Focus Features, the company that distributes the film, falls under the earlier VOD agreement of parent company Universal.) It played in more than 1,000 theaters over the weekend and raised $ 430,000, most of which came from drive-in locations. . Directed by Emerald Fennell and starring Carey Mulligan, ‘Promising Young Woman’ has so far earned $ 3.4 million in theaters. The studio did not report how many people rented the film online.
At the special box office, IFC Films opened ‘MLK / FBI’ – a documentary directed by Sam Pollard – on request and in more than 120 theaters nationwide. The film grossed $ 27,500 over the three-day weekend and is expected to gross $ 33,250 through Monday. Although IFC did not provide tangible rental statistics, the company said that the documentary was placed in the top 10 on Apple Movies’ independent charts and in the top 5 for documentary films.
“We are so delighted that the best-rated and most important documentary of the year is joining the public so strongly on all platforms,” said Arianna Bocco, President of IFC Films.
Overseas, Disney and Pixar’s “Soul” continued at the international box office, especially in China, where it was now the third highest-grossing Pixar film ever with $ 43.1 million. The much-loved animated film does not play in American theaters. Instead, it hosted the premiere of the company’s Disney service Disney Plus on Christmas Day. In total, “Soul” earned $ 57.4 million from 11 countries.