Weekend Box Office: Status Quo

By Ben Miller

With an extra day at the weekend box office, Avatar: The Way of Water and M3GAN both repeated at the top two spots, while continuing to show impressive legs.  The Way of Water droped less than 30% in its fifth week, adding another $30+ million to its domestic total.  It's already up to $1.9 billion worldwide, and it should become the sixth film in history to surpass $2 billion next week.  It's also currently 13th all-time in domestic gross and will probably end up in the top ten.  As for M3GAN, the film only dropped 40% in its second week, which is great for a horror film.  Budgeted at only $12 million, horror continues to be the best bang for your buck in films these days.

Weekend Box Office (actuals) Jan 13th-15th 🔺 = new or expanding /  ★ = Recommended
WIDE (OVER 800 SCREENS)	LIMITED / PLATFORM
M3GAN	SKINAMARINK
1 ★ AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER $32.8 (cum. $564.6) 4,045 screens	1 🔺   WALTAIR VEERAYYA $1.1 *NEW* 350 screens
2 ★ M3GAN $18.3 (cum. $56.8) 3,605 screens	2 🔺  SKINAMARINK $819k *NEW* 692 screens
3  ★  PUSS IN BOOTS: THE LAST WISH $14.4 (cum. $107.4)  3,687 screens	3 🔺 ★ BROKER $316k (cum. $501k) 271 screens
4 🔺  A MAN CALLED OTTO $12.8 (cum. $19.0) 3,802 screens	4 🔺★ WOMEN TALKING $201k (cum. $614k) 61 screens
5  🔺  PLANE $10.3 *NEW* 3,023 screens	5 ★ CORSAGE $95k (cum. $563k) 202 screens
6  🔺  HOUSE PARTY $4.0 *NEW* 1,400 screens	6 🔺★ LIVING $86k (cum. $218k) 32 screens
THE WHALE	LIVING
7 BLACK PANTHER WAKANDA FOREVER $2.4 (cum. $449.4) 1,910 screens	7 ★ THE BANSHEES OF INISHERIN $82k (cum. $9.3) 55 screens
8 🔺 THE WHALE $1.5 (cum. $10.7) 1,500 screens	8 ★ TÁR $73k (cum. $5.8) 60 screens
9 WHITNEY HOUSTON: I WANNA DANCE WITH SOMEBODY $1.2 (cum. $21.9) 3,184 screnes	9 🔺 ★ SAINT OMER $69k *NEW* 245 screens
10 ★ THE FABELMANS $544k (cum. $14.2) 808 screens	10 ★ EO $53k (cum. $653k) 70 screens
11 🔺 THE DEVIL CONSPIRACY $440k *NEW* 925 screens	11 ★ HOLY SPIDER $36k (cum. $265k) 95 screens

Elsewhere, Puss in Boots: The Last Wish has steadily made its way over $100 million and actually increased the box office from last week.  It's a great film, so we should all be happy for it.  Tom Hanks' curmudgeon remake A Man Called Otto expanded to wide release and managed a healthy $12.8 million.  Audiences are loving it, so it shouldn't be a surprise if it also has legs. The  new releases include Gerard Butler's latest action film Plane and the House Party remake.  Plane did MUCH better than House Party, but I wouldn't expect either to make much of a box office dent next week.

On the limited/platform side, the pickings are slim though the slowly expanding Broker and Corsage have done solid business and are now among the 25 most successful subtitled releases of 2022. It's not all good news. Microbudgeted horror film Skinamarink managed less than $1 million in almost 700 theaters, while Alice Diop's exceptional French Oscar-finalist Saint Omer made less than $300 per screen in its debut

Next Weekend - The only wide release is Missing, the psuedo-sequel to 2019's Searching.  It might be able to take some of the share away from the top two, but I would be shocked if it's anything higher than third.  In limited release is The Son, Florian Zeller's follow-up to his Oscar-winning The Father, as well as Jessie Eisenberg's directoral debut When You Finish Saving the World.

What did you watch this weekend? I was able to see A Man Called Otto and tried my best to hate it (but I could not).  I also rewatched Boogie Nights and checked off Oscar blindspots Sweet Bird of Youth and Divorce Italian Style.

Comments

[Wae Mest]

How is SKINAMARINK not good news? It was made for $15,000 and has already made nearly $1 million domestic. That's great news.

[Finbar McBride]

So sorry Ben that you felt compelled to check off Sweet Bird of Youth from your Oscar list. The Richard Brooks screen adaptation of the Tennessee Williams play is one of the most sanitized stories to wend its way from Broadway to the silver screen.

SPOILERS AHEAD

in the film drifter Chance Wayne (Paul Newman) returns to St. Cloud to reconnect with his great love Heavenly Finley much to the rage of her father Boss Finley. When Boss Finley faces an indictment, Heavenly and Chance leave St. Cloud together.

In the play gigolo to aging film star Alexandra Del Lago Chance Wayne (Paul Newman) returns to St. Cloud to reconnect with his great love Heavenly Finley much to the rage of her father Boss Finley. Chance’s last visit resulted in Heavenly’s pregnancy and her subsequent hysterectomy following a botched illegal abortion. At the end of the play, Boss Finley has his goons castrate Chance.

Veteran character actor Ed Begley won a surprise supporting actor Oscar for his portrayal of Boss Finley over the frontrunner Egyptian Omar Sharif for Lawrence of Arabia. Even then the victory smacked of racism. Three years later Oscar failed to even nominate Sharif for the Best Picture nominee and box office success Doctor Zhivago. Who did Academy voters prefer? Laurence Olivier playing Othello in blackface.

[Pam]

TO LESLIE: Oh my gawd, they know how to grow actors in the UK, don't they? I've been a fan of Andrea Riseborough for years. She's a very fine actress, even when she's doing dumb stuff like MATILDA. Except for the Hollywood A list on repeat, why isn't everyone talking about this performance?

[chasm301]

- 3rd viewing of Babylon, I like it more each time
- I Wanna Dance With Somebody - as forgettable as everyone said
- A Man Called Otto - still unnecessary and does nothing to distinguish itself from the earlier version, but I was charmed by a lot of it.

And at home:
- Watched my last Best Picture winner with The Great Ziegfeld. Yeah, it's closer to the bottom of the pack, but the production scenes here are stunning
- Little Children: loved it. I need to watch In The Bedroom ASAP because both Todd Field films I've seen have been great

[Dan H]

Skinamarink may be on 700 screens, but at least where I live, it's consigned to one showtime per day, rather than the usual 4 or 5. So it shouldn't be compared against limited release films that get shown four or five times a day. I'm hearing from a lot of people who've managed to see it that it's very good. I'm going to try to catch it tomorrow.

[thevoid99]

A short film on Disney+ in The Ballad of Nessie, Pinocchio by Guillermo del Toro and Mark Gustafson (great film), and a Mr. Bean short plus a re-watch of The Kingdom II as I just watched the first episode of The Kingdom Exodus.

[Mr Ripley79]

I watched a usual mixed bunch

Raging Bull classic film and clasic performances

Nuts a miscast Streisand with a solid supporting cast

Tunnel Vision Patsy Kensit 90's Australian thriller

Edna The Inerbriate woman 70's docu drama,a must watch

Hustle cliched sports drama with a fine performance by Sandler

The Original 1975 Stepford Wives

Venom very poor 2004 slasher

Unforgettable silly thriller what happened to Rosario Dawson,I haven;t seen her in ages

Devil Doll 1963 killer doll into hocus pocus nonsense

[jules]

I saw Women Talking and Broker in theaters. Broker is not one of Kore-eda's best, but still well worth seeing. Women Talking felt like homework, and I hated the desaturated cinematography. I understand why none of the performances have caught on this season; they were all fine, but unexceptional.

Among this year's #metoo movies, I much preferred She Said, which I watched at home this week. Yes, it felt familiar in that it was a journalism procedural, but it also managed to be very engaging, and it included two great supporting performances by Jennifer Ehle and Samantha Morton. The indifferent critical response to this movie (and the glee over its box office failure) have done it a disservice.

I also watched Shallow Grave (good; young Ewan McGregor was so cute, my goodness) and Sharp Stick (okay, but Catherine Called Birdy is clearly the Lena Dunham 2022 release to see).

[Dan H]

Update on Skinamarink. It has been playing at my local Premiere Cinemas venue once a day (7:30PM). Starting Friday they're increasing the number of shows to four a day. It's also moving into a second local theater with five shows a day, so it must have done well in that one screening a day in a single theater. Usually films drop screens/showtimes. This is adding more. This could turn out to be a slow building sleeper.

[Michael R]

I saw Women Talking and absolutely loved it. Cannot believe Buckley and/or Foy are not in the conversation more. I thought it was so beautiful.

[TomG]

I saw Women Talking and Babylon.

Women Talking is by FAR the better movie. I thought Judith Ivey and Sheila McCarthy were best out of the ensemble as the elders contemplating what has happening and even their own guilt in allowing it to go on. No one got up right away when the movie was over. The true story behind the movie though is even more horrific. Warning to the readers- only look into it if you in the right frame of mind. I had to stop reading several times.

Babylon- sigh- what did I watch? At best, I would rank it as just OK. Did I really spend 30 minutes watching Robbie just walk across a stage? Warning to those who have not seen it yet- there is SO MUCH bodily fluids in this movie and if you are squeamish- just skip it.