As predicted, UNCHARTED won the weekend easily by grossing $23.2M and falling only 47%. The Tom Holland/Mark Wahlberg buddy actioner has grossed $83M in its first ten days and is on a trajectory to become the best-performing non-sequel feature of the pandemic era.
Last year, FREE GUY which opened on 8/13/21 was the only original movie successful enough to warrant a sequel, grossing $122M in North America. After ten days, FREE GUY had grossed $49M while UNCHARTED has now grossed $83M, 69% ahead of that number. With sequels accounting for so much of the total box office over the past several years, it is a very healthy sign that another new movie has risen to join the ranks of high-profile titles with proven appeal.
DOG finished in second place with a weekend gross of $10.1M, a very respectable drop of 32% in its second week. SPIDER-MAN: NO WAY HOME came in third place, with $5.8M in its eleventh weekend. SPIDEY is simply the picture that just won’t die, with a cume of $780M and certain to pass $800M in the very near future.
While you could argue that UNCHARTED with Tom Holland would cut into the grosses for SPIDER-MAN it appears that the opposite has happened. The newer UNCHARTED has created additional interest in SPIDER-MAN: NO WAY HOME. While UNCHARTED grossed a very healthy $60M in its opening week SPIDER-MAN: NO WAY HOME actually went up 6% for the week.
On another positive note, the fiftieth-anniversary re-release of THE GODFATHER was well received, taking in $900K at only 156 locations and finishing with a per theatre average of $5,769 for the weekend. Its success underscores the fact that a big-screen presentation of quality content remains sought after by the general public.
On a less positive note, the two big opening pictures of the weekend STUDIO 666 and CYRANO failed to make an impression. Grossing only $1.6M, and $1.4M and finishing 8th and 9th respectively, they have joined an increasingly long list of pandemic era titles that were abject failures at the box office. The industry generated $60.5M in total box office for the weekend, which amounts to 47% of the results from the same weekend in 2019.
Attention has already turned to next weekend’s eagerly-awaited opening of THE BATMAN. Sporting positive reviews and strong advanced ticket sales, many are predicting that THE BATMAN will become the second-biggest theatrical release since March 2019. With expectations for a dazzling opening weekend, the only remaining question is how well it holds up in subsequent weeks. It should provide a much-needed shot in the arm.