It was just like the good old days at the box-office this weekend, with three wide releases competing with blockbuster holdovers for everyone’s pandemic pound-note (or in this case dollar), and while nobody saw Universal’s animated comedy The Bad Guys making off with so much swag atop the chart, there was a crushing inevitability about the sophomore performance of Fantastic Beasts, and decent debut for Robert Egger’s arthouse epic The Northman.
Let’s start with the newcomers, one of which exceeded expectations by grossing $24M from under the noses of the competition to open at number one. Universal and DreamWorks Animation’s The Bad Guys [read our review here] had already opened overseas, amassing $63.1M by the end of the weekend, which means that the Sam Rockwell and Awkwafina voiced kids flick stands at a global cume of $87.1M.
Lionsgate’s The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent [read our review here], the much ballyhooed self referential Nic Cage comedy opened pretty much as expected with $7.2M, landing half way down the chart. The well received film currently sits at 88% on Rotten Tomatoes, and has a worldwide total of $9.6M. It will be interesting to see whether it has much traction beyond the hardcore fanbase over the coming weeks.
Rounding out the new releases was Robert Eggers The Northman [read our review here], which opened in fourth spot with an impressive arthouse total of $12.1M . Ordinarily this would be something worth hollering from a cliff-edge about, but the Alexander Skarsgård, Nicole Kidman, Anya Taylor-Joy, Ethan Hawke, Björk and Willem Dafoe starring Viking epic has a reported budget of $90M, which it is unlikely to recoup, despite pillaging a further $11.5M overseas.
The two titles making up the rest of the top 5 are suffering contrasting fortunes; Sonic the Hedgehog 2 [read our review here] picked up the pace to keep second place with a mighty impressive weekend of $15.2M, which puts it only $3M behind the original films domestic gross. Paramount’ videogame sequel has now raced around the world and collected $287.8M worth of gold rings at the box-office.
The same can’t be said for Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore [read our review here], which crashed to third spot with a franchise worst drop of -66.8% and a weekend total of $14M. It seems unimaginable to think that a film from The Wizarding World of Harry Potter might not cross the $100M mark at the U.S. box-office. Fantastic Beasts 3 has performed better overseas, making $213.2M at the international box-office, but even a worldwide total of $280.3M might not be enough to save this faltering franchise.
As always, the full weekend chart can be found over at BoxOfficeMojo.
