Lionsgate’s prayers were finally answered this weekend, as the third installment in the John Wick franchise defied expectations with a fantastic $57 million opening weekend – the highest debut for the studio since the final Hunger Games title back in 2015. Meanwhile, the two newcomers aimed at younger audiences – A Dog’s Journey and The Sun Is Also a Star – failed to capture an audience.

John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum is a perfect example of how not all franchises follow similar patterns; while it has become increasingly common for sequels to gross less than their predecessors, the John Wick saga has grossed significantly more with each installment, not entirely unlike the Austin Powers series from the late 90s and early 2000s. While John Wick 2 managed to double its predecessor, it still remained fairly niche in terms of general appeal, limited to third place in its debut. Parabellum, however, was the first full-on blockbuster for the series, and proved that films can still grow an audience long after they leave theaters.

Avengers: Endgame was finally knocked out of first place this weekend, so it won’t have as many weekends in first as Black Panther, it will have to take its consolation prize of becoming the second highest grossing domestic release of all time, as it finally surpassed the domestic total of Avatar this weekend. Worldwide, it is about $220 million away from beating Avatar and becoming the highest grossing worldwide release in history.

Pokemon: Detective Pikachu didn’t have a great hold in its second weekend, dropping a rather harsh 54% for a ten day tally of $94 million. On a budget of $150 million, the video game adaptation has captured just over $200 million so far, and still has a long way to go if it’s going to break even in its theatrical run.

Universal and Warner Brothers both attempted to counterprogram John Wick this weekend with A Dog’s Journey and The Sun Is Also a Star respectively, though unfortunately both wound up well below expectations. A Dog’s Journey opened to just $8 million, less than half of what its predecessor made in 2017, and was even below Sony’s A Dog’s Way Home from January. As stated previously, it seems probable that audiences assumed Way Home was the sequel to Purpose, and as a result didn’t want to shell out tickets just a few months later for what looked like the same film.

While A Dog’s Journey fared poorly, it wasn’t even close to The Sun Is Also a Star, the YA romantic drama based on the book of the same name; playing in just over 2,000 locations, Star clocked in an awful $2.6 million, which was only good for 8th place. The main problem here was a lack of an effective hook in its marketing campaign; while some similar titles like Me Before You and Everything, Everything have managed to find their niche audience in the early summer weeks, Star didn’t seem to offer much outside of a generic romantic story taking place in New York City, and as a result, nobody showed up. The only bright spot is that Warner clearly didn’t spend much on the film, which cost just $9 million to produce and, evidently, not much to market.

There was a slew of poor drops among this weekends holdovers, with titles like UglyDoll, Tolkien and Poms all dropping over 60%. Even The Hustle fell over 50%, which is less than ideal for a film targeting older audienecs, which typically results in longer legs.