'Crazy Rich Asians' Easily Wins the Weekend
by EG
Comedy hit Crazy Rich Asians had no trouble winning the weekend for the second time in a row. Jon Chu's comedy held remarkably well, and it faced little competition from newcomer The Happytime Murders, which bombed big time. Read on for details.
Jon M. Chu's Crazy Rich Asians soared to $25 million in its second outing — almost as much as the rom-com earned in its first weekend and representing one of the best holds in modern history for a wide release summer title.
Not everyone escaped the dog days of August unscathed. Melissa McCarthy's latest R-rated comedy, The Happytime Murders, opened to a dismal $10 million domestically from 3,526 theaters in a career low for the actress for a movie in which she has top billing. The new family adventure A.X.L. fared even worse, launching to $2.9 million in another blow for Global Road as the mini-film studio teeters on the edge of bankruptcy.
The big headline overseas was Disney and Marvel's Ant-Man and the Wasp, which topped the foreign chart with $71.2 million, fueled by a stellar debut in China of $68 million. That's the fourth-best showing of any title in the Marvel Cinematic Universe behind Avengers: Age of Ultron, Avengers: Infinity War and Captain America: Civil War.
China and Japan (where the pic is set to bow Aug. 31) are Ant-Man's final foreign markets. The sequel has now overtaken the first Ant-Man ($519 million) to finish Sunday with a global total of $544 million.
Happytime Murders landed at No. 3 in North America behind Crazy Rich Asians and The Meg, both from Warner Bros., which is dominating the final weeks of the summer season. All told, summer revenue is running ahead of the same corridor in 2017 by nearly 14 percent, according to comScore.
Crazy Rich Asians — groundbreaking for featuring an all-Westernized Asian cast — fell a scant six percent domestically from the $25.6 million it earned last weekend as part of its five-day debut of $35.3 million. Playing in 3,526 locations, the movie's 12-day domestic total through Sunday is $76.8 million, an impressive number considering the overall comedy slump at the box office and the fact that the rom-com cost a modest $30 million to produce. Moreover, Crazy Rich Asians is already the top-grossing comedy of the year so far domestically after quickly besting Game Night ($69 million).
Get the rest of the story at The Hollywood Reporter.
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