Nicole Kidman has the top two movies in the nation today, with the surprise hit The Upside and the endless hit Aquaman. She's also got Destroyer in the top ten platform films of the moment. In short she never stops working and sometimes audiences come out for it. Listen, you could argue that she has nothing to do with the success of Aquaman or The Upside but why would you want to? Come live in our better world where the public lines up in droves and says "one for the new Nicole Kidman, please!".
More box office commentary after the jump...
| Weekend Box Office (Estimates) (January 11th-13th) |
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| W I D E 800+ screens |
PLATFORM / LIMITED excluding prev. wide |
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| 1 The Upside $20.3 on 3080 screens *NEW* |
1 🔺 Free Solo $812k on 154 screens (cum. $12.3) Review ❤️ |
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| 2 Aquaman $17.3 on 3863 screens (cum. $287.9) Review, Podcast |
2 🔺 Uri: The Surgical Strike $631k on 101 screens *NEW* |
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| 3 A Dog's Way Home $11.2 on 3090 screens *NEW* |
3 Ben is Back $478k on 598 screens (cum. $3.1) Review, Podcast ❤️ |
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| 4 Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse $9 on 3029 screens (cum. $147.8) Review ❤️ | 4 🔺 Perfect Strangers $422k on 132 screens *NEW* |
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| 5 Escape Room $8.9 on 2717 screens (cum. $32.4) |
5 Simmba $326k on 136 screens (cum. $4.7) |
It's a mystery as to why Roadside Attractions waited 6 whole weeks before getting Ben is Back into 100s of theaters. It's still not wide but they surely missed any potential window to exploit their stars for some holiday dollars. Not that people wanna see addiction dramas over the holidays.
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| 6 Mary Poppins Returns $7.6 on 3253 screens (cum. $151) Podcast, Dance Scenes ❤️ |
6 🔺 Shoplifters $184k on 91 screens (cum. $1.9) Interview, Podcast, OSCAR SUBMISSION ❤️ |
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| 7 Bumblebee $7.2 on 3303 screens (cum. $108.9) |
7 🔺 Destroyer $151k on 27 screens (cum. $426k) Review, FYC Best Actress ❤️ |
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| 8🔺 On the Basis of Sex $6 on 1923 screens (cum. $10.4) Review |
8 🔺 The Wife $111k on 156 screens (cum. $8.3) Globe Speech, Interview, Poster Blurb ❤️ |
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| 9 🔺 The Mule $5.6 on 3329 screens (cum. $90.7) Review |
9 🔺 Cold War $97k on 10 screens (cum. $410k) Review, Podcast, Oscar FINALIST ❤️ |
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| 10 Vice $3.2 on 1724 screens (cum. $35.8) Podcast, Random Thoughts |
10 🔺 Stan & Ollie $88k on 13 screens (cum. $358k) Review ❤️ |
| 🔺 = new or expanding theater count / ❤️ = recommended by TFE numbers (in millions unless otherwise noted) from box office mojo |
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Some final thoughts:
- Talk about staying power. The Wife, which never quite went into wide release, has not left theaters since opening on August 17th (that's 22 weeks in theaters!) and they've added over 100 theaters to capitalize on the Golden Globe win and the Oscar buzz.
- One movie that's being pretty timid about its release (we talked about this on the podcast this week) is Cold War. It has a high per screen average but it's still only at 10 theaters, in its fourth week. They're surely waiting on an Oscar nomination. But what if they don't get it? Shoplifters by comparison isn't waiting and it's doing really well, almost $2 million already at 91 theaters.
- Two wide releases that didn't hit the top ten above: If Beale Street Could Talk went wide for the first time adding $2.4 million to its gross, a good if ungreat result (in other words if Oscar nominations don't happen in a week, it'll be a fast fade). And finally there was very very bad news for the wide release of the sci-fi horror flick Replicas. It opened on over 2,000 theaters and made only $375,000. That's one of the lowest per screen averages you'll see for a wide release: $161 per theaters. Ouch, Keanu, ouch.