The new year started off strong, largely fueled by holdover business from the trio of Christmas titles Bumblebee, Mary Poppins Returns and Aquaman. Taking advantage of the lack of releases, Sony had the sole new release of the weekend in the form of Escape Room, which shot past its $10-12 million tracking with a strong $18 million debut.

Aquaman remained in first for the third weekend running, adding another $30.7 million to its mammoth tally, which is now just shy of $260 million. The superhero blockbuster has an excellent shot at surpassing the domestic total of Batman V Superman to become the second highest grossing film in the DCEU, only behind Wonder Woman. Internationally, the film is doing even more impressive business, as its worldwide total now stands at a towering $940 million. Without any big new releases on the horizon until Glass on the 18th, it’s just a matter of time before it becomes the latest film to join the billion dollar club.

In second, Sony may have scored the new franchise starter they were hoping for with Escape Room, as the PG-13 thriller opened to an admirable $18 million. Predictions had this opening in the low teens going into the weekend, before the title opened to a very impressive $2.3 million on Thursday. However, that also included 4PM screenings, which made it much more accessible to its target audience of teens on winter break. Because of that, it would up being more front loaded than anticipated, which isn’t too much of a concern when considering it only cost $9 million to produce. Critics weren’t thrilled with a 52% on Rotten Tomatoes, but audiences gave it a B Cinemascore – above average for the genre. With decent legs, it will likely wind up somewhere between $40-45 million.

Third place belonged to holdover Mary Poppins Returns, which continues to see mixed results after a lackluster opening. The musical was down 44% from its impressive jump last weekend, and has already collected $138 million domestically – about as much as it cost to produce. This falls into the ‘good not great’ category that few were expecting, as it was almost universally expected to be a major hit.

Fourth and fifth place were neck and neck between Bumblebee and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, with the latter winning by around $300K. Paramount’s reboot of the Transformers franchise is riding a wave of strong word of mouth, as it nears $100 million after three weekends. Bumblebee actually had the strongest hold of the three major titles, only down 39%. At $97 million domestic and counting, it remains to be seen if it can surpass the haul of Transformers: The Last Knight from 2017. Spider-Verse also held well, down 31% as it brings its new total to $133.8 million.

Two awards season contenders saw light expansions this weekend, as On the Basis of Sex and If Beale Street Could Talk continued their solid runs in limited release. On the Basis expanded to 112 locations ahead of a 2,000 theater release next weekend, and collected an impressive $1.6 million. Beale Street was not quite as impressive, but still posted an admirable $1.8 million from 335 locations. Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight follow up is set to continue expanding over the next few weeks.

Following a dismal response from critics and audiences alike, Holmes and Watson had a terrible 54% drop after opening weekend. That’s a rather unprecedented hold among Christmas releases, and shows just how toxic word of mouth was. Vice had an acceptable hold considering it had some polarizing reactions, but was still down 25%, giving it a total of just $29 million against a budget of $60 million. Without a slew of Oscar nominations, this is increasingly looking like a major write-off for Annapurna Pictures.