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

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Weekend Box Office: M3GAN is Another Slasher Hit

By Ben Miller

As Smile and The Black Phone proved in 2022, no genre gets more bang for their buck than horror.  Avatar: The Way of Water was the top draw at theaters this weekend, but it's the murderous robot M3GAN that made the biggest splash.  Budgeted at a mere $12 million, Gerard Jonstone's film grossed a shocking $30 million to go along with jubiliant critical praise (93% on Rotten Tomatoes!).  After all, she is our new horror princess.  The Way of Water managed just a 33% drop in its fourth week with $45 million as it barrells it's way towards $2 billion worldwide.  Despite only being in theaters for four weeks, it's the seventh highest grossing movie of all-time.  James Cameron cannot miss (at least financially).

Weekend Box Office (actuals) Jan 6th-8th 🔺 = new or expanding /  ★ = Recommended
WIDE (OVER 800 SCREENS)	LIMITED / PLATFORM
M3GAN	A MAN CALLED OTTO
1 ★ AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER $45.8 (cum. $517.6) 4340 screens	1 🔺   A MAN CALLED OTTO $4.2 (cum. $4.2) 637 screens
2 🔺 ★ M3GAN $30.4 *NEW* 3509 screens	2 🔺 ★ CORSAGE $251k (cum. $342k) 317 screens

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Review: Say hello to 'M3GAN' our new favorite Horror Princess

by Jason Adams

If you look at the episodes of Shudder’s documentary series “Behind the Monsters” – each of which was devoted to its own Horror Icon – one thing became painfully clear right up front: Where the hell are our female horror icons? I don’t mean the survivors – we all know our Final Girls, they are legion. I mean the villains. Where is our Jasine Voorhees? Our Frederica Krueger? Why does nothing happen if I say “Candygal” five times in the mirror??? 

Well the past couple of years have finally begun to right that gendered wrong, bringing us the return of Isabella Fuhrman’s Esther in her Orphan franchise (hopefully TBC, as the second film was a total hoot) as well as Mia Goth’s ax-welding and Oscar-worthy turn in Pearl (in both the titular prequel as well as X). Finally some iconic Halloween costumes for the Lizzie Borden lovers among us! And now this weekend makes for three with M3GAN, director Gerard Johnstone’s riotously entertaining new slasher, which merges Chucky with Mean Girls to gift us with an insta-icon for the horror ages.

M3GAN stands for “Model 3 Generative Android”... 

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