Weekend Wrap-Up
By Tim Briody
February 4, 2018
BoxOfficeProphets.com

No one cares about movies this weekend.

Hollywood takes Super Bowl weekend off, offering us only a horror movie with a big name actor inexplicably slumming it, which lets a movie released at Christmas retake the number one spot at the box office.

Yup, in its seventh weekend, Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle retakes the #1 spot with a weekend of $11 million. That’s down 32% from last weekend and gives it a massive $352.6 million in since its Christmas weekend launch. It’s the fifth weekend of 2018 and releases from last year have been the top movie in all but one weekend. I really don’t think anyone saw this coming, at least not to this extent. It’s Sony’s third most successful movie ever (behind the first two Spider-Man movies, at $403.7 million and $373.3 million respectively) and with this weekend, passes Furious 7 ($351 million) as the biggest hit of The Rock’s career, domestically speaking of course. There’s little else that needs to be added to this performance, other than with the addition of another film still hanging around the top 5, we’re going to remember this holiday season for movies other than The Last Jedi, a movie that made $600 million.

Predictably dropping to second place is Maze Runner: The Death Cure, with $10.2 million, down 58% from last weekend, giving it $39.7 million in two weekends. That’s actually worse than the second weekend decline of The Scorch Trials, which dipped 53% to $14.2 million in its second week. The young adult franchise is at least getting to play out the string and didn’t decide to split the last book into two movies *glares one more time in Divergent’s direction* after the second film gave back 20% of The Maze Runner’s total. The Death Cure isn’t going to reach the $81 million earned by The Scorch Trials, and it’s looking at a total of $60 million by the time it’s finished.

Winchester was the one new wide release this weekend, thrown to the wolves by CBS Films. They actually found a little bit of success with something similar in 2012 with The Woman in Black, which starred Daniel Radcliffe. That opened to $20 million (also over Super Bowl weekend) and then crashed hard, finishing with $54.3 million. Winchester starred Oscar winner Helen Mirren and found $9.2 million on the weekend. It wasn't screened for critics, and it has since found a 9% Fresh rating at Rotten Tomatoes. It’s headed for a quick trip out of theaters, as it’s about to get buried by the next two weekends of releases.

The Greatest Showman continues to set records as one of the leggiest films of all time, down just another 18% from last weekend to $7.8 million. It finally has a weekend lower than its opening weekend, and it has now earned $137.4 million in seven weekends. The most amazing stat is that someone did the math and found that the Hugh Jackman/Zac Efron musical is leggier than Titanic (with some slightly lower numbers, of course). There’s little that indicates The Greatest Showman won’t be able to continue this for a couple more weeks, as it looks to $150 million, a figure that seemed ridiculously out of reach when it opened to $8.8 million over Christmas.

Hostiles drops 45% in its second weekend of wide release, earning $5.5 million and giving it $21.2 million to date. The western starring Christian Bale isn’t going to make its reported $39 million budget back, and it also had a platform release in December, ostensibly for some awards attention that never came. It won’t be a major factor after this weekend.

The Post adds $5.2 million, down 43% from last week and has earned $67.1 million after four weekends in wide release. Still the highest profile Best Picture nominee currently in theaters (though Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, I, Tonya and Darkest Hour all added screens this weekend but missed the top ten), The Post has performed admirably, though it’s likely thanks to the presence of Tom Hanks, Meryl Streep and direction of Steven Spielberg.

12 Strong earns $4.7 million (off 46%) and has $37.3 million in three weekends. The reported production cost was $35 million, so that’s a win for Warner Bros. as it looks to finish just shy of $50 million. Den of Thieves basically mirrors 12 Strong, dropping 45% to $4.6 million and earning $36.2 million in three weekends. This one had somewhat lower expectations, but it made back the $30 million production budget so STX Entertainment is surely happy with this one.

Leading Oscar nominee The Shape of Water drops 27% to $4.3 million and has earned $44.5 million in its second weekend in wide release. Is the subject matter too weird for mainstream audiences? Probably, but the pedigree and awards buzz carried it to a decent box office total (it’s actually fourth among the Best Picture nominees in domestic box office). It’ll hit about $60 million total, with the potential for more should it win any of the big awards (it’s almost a tossup at this point, per J. Don Birnam, our expert awards analyst).

Paddington 2 wraps up our top ten, dropping 45% to $3.1 million and $36.3 million in four weekends, to go along with the $150 million earned internationally (though in this film’s case, we were the international audience). The total is somewhat depressing considering the 100% Fresh rating, but it’ll do gangbusters on DVD, I’m sure.

The top 12 films this weekend earned just $71.3 million, down against the $80.7 million last year when Split led for a third weekend.

Next weekend, just in time for Valentine’s Day, we’ve got Fifty Shades Freed, wrapping up the Diminishing Returns trilogy, family entry Peter Rabbit and Clint Eastwood’s film about the 2015 European train attack, 15:17 to Paris.