Columbia Pictures’ PG-13 thriller Escape Room, the only wide entry this weekend and for the New Year, fired up $2.3M at 2,386 locations last night from showtimes starting at 4PM. While moviegoers will continue to flock to holiday holdovers such as Warner Bros/DC’s Aquaman, which is poised to post between $25M-$32M in its third weekend, horror scares up young females under 25. Escape Room‘s money last night is higher than the $1.98M that Universal/Blumhouse’s fourthquel Insidious: The Last Key made a year ago in Thursday night previews. Last Key went on to make a massive $29.5M opening, and finaled at $67.5M off a $10M budget before P&A. Adam Robitel directed both Escape Room and Last Key.
Tracking had Escape Room between $10M and $14M, and last night’s figure indicates a FSS toward the higher end of that range. The movie reportedly cost Sony around $9M, and when it comes to young genre movies, the Culver City studio have been aces in the digital marketing realm.
Aquaman drew $6.2M yesterday, -16% from Wednesday and in two weeks has come very close to beating the lifetime domestic cume of Justice League ($229.02M) with $229.017M, a marvelous result.
Disney’s Mary Poppins Returns is eyeing a third weekend of $21M after a $3.95M Thursday, -11%, for a running total of $122.95M.
Paramount’s Bumblebee, Sony’s Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and Escape Room will be battling for third with mid-teen takes.
Spider-Verse grossed $3.1M on Thursday, -5%. Anecdotally, to give you an idea of how much this animated film speaks to crowds, the Wednesday night 7:20PM 400-seat show at the Regal Valencia outside L.A. was filled to the brim, with audiences applauding after the film finished; a majority of the auditorium stayed and sat through the credits. Through three weeks Spider-Verse counts $120.9M. Bumblebee took in an estimated $2.6M yesterday for a two-week of $84.35M.
Warner Bros.’ The Mule ended its three weeks with $72M and is looking at a fourth weekend of $9M, -26%. The Clint Eastwood movie could very well walk its way to $100M.
Annapurna’s Vice is looking at a second weekend of $6M, -22%. Through ten days the Adam McKay-directed movie counts $24M after a $981K Thursday, -5%. The Dick Cheney movie will eclipse the $25.5M lifetime domestic total today of Oliver Stone’s 2008 title W. which was about President George W. Bush.
Source: Read Full Article