With a blizzard keeping a large number of potential moviegoers indoors this weekend, there wasn’t a lot of activity at the box office. Three weak new openers failed to garner much attention, allowing The Revenant to take first yet again in its third weekend of wide release.

The Revenant dropped 50% down to $16M this weekend. With the blizzard, the number of each of these releases likely could have gone up 10% or more. As someone who was snowed in this weekend, almost all of the movie theaters in my area were closed on Saturday and Sunday, something that absolutely damaged these grosses a bit. I happen to live in a very movie centric area, so only having one out of about half a dozen theaters open was a good sign as to how the weather affected the box office.

In second place, Star Wars was down 46% to $14.25M, bringing its new domestic total to a whopping $879M, allowing it to finally cross 100M tickets sold. That’s a major milestone that brings it to 11th place all time when adjusted for inflation, and it likely still has enough juice to cross the $900M mark.

In third, Ride Along 2 plummeted 63% to $12.96M, for a new domestic total of $59M. That’s way worse than the 49% drop of the original Ride Along, but that isn’t overly surprising given that this type of comedy sequel tends to be much more front loaded than its predecessor. Without the snow, it may have dropped more in the 55% range, but it’s kind of impossible to know. At this rate, it will likely wind up with around $80M domestic.

Dirty Grandpa topped the newcomers with $11.5M, a fine enough gross for an R rated January comedy. The B Cinemascore didn’t exactly fall in line with the whopping 8% Rotten Tomatoes score, but it could’ve been much worse. It should be able to top out around $30M domestic or so.

In fifth place, The Boy scored a solid $11.2M against a very cheap $10M production budget. Supernatural PG-13 horror is practically a guarantee at this point, with low teens being the average around this time of year. This is a bit lower than The Forest ($12.7M) which admittedly had a more original and unique setting, but considering that the creepy-doll genre has all but run its course, this is a solid enough start. Surprisingly, even with the storm, the film saw a very solid 18% jump on Saturday, meaning it might not be as front loaded as usual. The film played towards a primarily younger audience, with many commercials featuring tweets and emojis instead of traditional critical quotes (the 23% Rotten Tomatoes score may have had something to do with that, however) but this is still a win for distributor STX Entertainment.

In sixth place, The 5th Wave bombed with $10.7M. The latest in the seemingly unending craze of YA novel adaptations failed to garner any interest outside of its pre-existing fanbase, with trailers that looked extremely cheap and derivative of dozens of other more popular books. The most similar of which had to be The Host, which had a very similar opening ($10.6M) and the exact same plot, of a young girl being one of the few survivors after a race of aliens takes over the world and inhabits living human hosts. As a result, there wasn’t very much interest in the film, leading to one of the lowest grossing YA adaptation openings on record. With a $38M budget, it’s going to have a very tough time breaking even, especially since overseas grosses have been next to nothing.

In limited release, Ip Man 3 started off with a solid $762K from 103 theaters, with a per theater average of $7.4K. However, Chinese mega-blockbuster Monster Hunt failed miserably in the states, with a laughably bad $21K from 45 theaters, giving it an average of just $467. Considering that the majority of those screenings were in cities (higher average ticket prices) and in 3D, it’s estimated that each theater sold around 27 tickets this weekend. As far as Oscar nominees, Anomalisa expanded into 143 theaters and took in $375K. Considering that it isn’t exactly something that will play to a wide audience, the largest release it can hope for is a few hundred more theaters. Paramount acquired the film for $8M after some very well received festival screenings, and it will most likely make its money in the home video market.

Room got the biggest expansion of the weekend, adding 569 theaters (for a total of 862) and grossed a decent $1.4M. Brooklyn added 275 theaters for a 962 total, yet still dipped 7% for a mediocre $1.6M. It has still grossed over $27M, putting it on the higher end of BP nominees, and considering its crowd pleaser status can likely get to around $35M or so.

More from Bombs and Blockbusters

The 5th Wave – Movie Review

https://bombsandblockbusters.wordpress.com/2016/01/22/the-5th-wave-movie-review/

Weekend Forecast: ‘The Boy’ Set to Top Newcomers

https://bombsandblockbusters.wordpress.com/2016/01/22/weekend-forecast-the-boy-set-to-top-newcomers/