'Godzilla x Kong' Conquers the Box Office One More Time
by EG
This weekend's new movies weren't able to topple Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire from its perch on top of the box-office charts. Violent action movie Monkey Man took a distant second place to the hold-over monster movie with a disappointing $10 million debut. Having an even worse showing was the horror prequel The First Omen, which could only manage a fourth-place finish. In between in third place was the horror comedy sequel Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire. Read on for details.
Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire were the monsters with the mostest at the box office this weekend, as Dev Patel‘s much buzzed-about feature directorial debut Monkey Man and supernatural franchise installment The First Omen both opened behind expectations.
Neither genre film ever had a chance of taking away the No. 1 spot from Warner Bros. and Legendary’s Godzilla x Kong, but had hoped for a bigger slice of the proverbial box office pie. Godzilla, from filmmaker Adam Wingard, is proving to be a significant victory for Josh Grode’s Legendary Pictures on the heels of Dune: Part Two, which is the top-grossing film of the year to date with $660.7 million in global ticket sales through Sunday. And Godzilla is also a big win for Warner Bros. and Legendary’s MonsterVerse series, at a time when many franchises are struggling to remain fresh.
Godzila x Kong topped the chart with $31.7 million in its sophomore outing for a domestic cume of $135 million. It fell 60 percent, a relatively good hold for a title opening to $80 million. Overseas, it fell only 53 percent to $59.3 million from 69 markets for a foreign total of $226 million — including $92.2 million in China — and $361.1 million globally.
Presented by Universal and Jordan Peele’s Monkeypaw Productions, Monkey Man placed second with an estimated $10.1 million. Heading into the weekend, tracking suggested that both Monkey Man and The First Omen would find themselves in a close race with $12 million to $14 million each.
One huge problem overall: a glut of male-skewing projects, although The First Omen succeeded in luring plenty of younger women as well (49 percent). The other two skewed more than 60 percent male.
While $10 million isn’t necessarily a bad number for a film that secured studio distribution at the 11th hour at the urging of Peele, expectations were high after Universal smartly debuted Monkey Man at South by Southwest, where it received a rousing response from the audience, influencers and critics.
Universal and the filmmakers are hoping for a long run, but word-of-mouth shifted as Monkey Man entered the marketplace. It earned a lukewarm B+ CinemaScore from audiences and pided exits on PostTrak surveys.
Get the rest of the story at The Hollywood Reporter.