‘Sinners’ Defies 'Gravity' and Avoids Post-IMAX 'Hangover' While China's 'Ne Zha 2' Passes 'Avatar' At Overseas Box Office
Ben Affleck's 'The Accountant 2' gets audited via a 61% drop as Warner Bros. Legendary's other super-smash 'A Minecraft Movie' ends day 31 near $400 million
Whether or not Thunderbolts* opening with $76 million in North America and $162 million worldwide is good enough for a low-level MCU title, the good news is that Marvel’s overall strength is currently more of an issue for Disney than for theaters. That’s frankly how it was up until the late 2010s, when even sky-high global results for Captain America: The Winter Soldier ($714 million) and Avengers: Age of Ultron ($1.4 billion) stood alongside super-smashes like Dawn of the Planet of the Apes ($710 million) and Furious 7 ($1.5 billion). This weekend saw a comparative spreading of the wealth, whereby the MCU flick “only” accounted for 53% of the weekend’s total domestic spending of $142 million. Thunderbolts* may have topped the weekend box office, but Sinners remains a near-unprecedented winner regardless of rank.
Ryan Coogler’s R-rated, original, 2.25-hour vampire thriller earned another $33 million in weekend three, dropping just 28% despite losing its IMAX screens to the MCU machine. Fun fact 01: Oppenheimer, which opened with $81 million and massively overindexed in IMAX, would keep those screens and still “only” earn $29 million in its third weekend. Fun fact 02: Sinners landed among the top 50 third-weekend grosses ever. Most of the other 49 consist of some combination of year-end Christmas releases (Jumanji 2 and Jumanji 3), big flicks whose third weekend fell on Thanksgiving (Skyfall), wide-release Oscar season expansions (Lone Survivor, 1917 or The Revenant) or films that opened above $100 million (in most cases closer to $150 million). Unless I missed one, it’s the biggest third weekend ever for a film that opened below $75 million.
Even counting December releases, this is the seventh biggest third weekend for a wide release that opened below $100 million behind Titanic (yes, Titanic… with a $33.3 million third weekend following its $28 million Fri-Sun debut), Jumanji: The Next Level ($35.5 million/$60 million), Skyfall ($35 million/$88 million), Zootopia ($37 million/$75 million), Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle ($37 million/$35 million) and Avatar ($69 million/$77 million). Skyfall’s third weekend fell on Thanksgiving, while the Jumanji sequels and James Cameron’s gruesome twosome were holiday releases. Aside from Zootopia and its early-March $75 million debut, the other “lowest opening weekend” for third-weekend grosses above $33 million were the slightly $100 million-plus likes of The Jungle Book and Wonder Woman. Regarding “not an Oscar expansion” flicks, every film in this conversation ended its domestic run above $300 million.