'Jumanji' Back on Top, 'Maze Runner' Slumps
by EG
No one expects theatrical films to perform very well over the Super Bowl weekend, so it was little surprise that last week's top movie, The Maze Runner: The Death Cure, failed have a good weekend. It was a little more surprising, though, that Maze Runner gave up the top spot to Jumanji: Welcome To The Jungle, a movie that's already been in theaters for almost two months.
Sony's Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle has scored another touchdown, reclaiming the No. 1 spot in its seventh outing at the North American box office. It's the first time since Titanic in 1998 that a movie released nationwide in December has won a weekend in February.
Jumanji grossed an estimated $11 million from 3,352 theaters for a domestic total of $352.6 million and a global haul of $855.7 million. It will soon overtake 2015's Furious 7 ($353 million) in North America to mark Dwayne Johnson's top-grossing movie domestically.
YA pic Maze Runner: The Death Cure (Fox) fell to No. 2 in its second outing, earning an estimated $10.2 million from 3,793 locations for a domestic cume of $39.8 million. The threequel declined 58 percent. Internationally, Maze Runner won the frame with $35.2 million from 20 markets, including a 10-day China haul of $37 million, for a foreign tally of $149.9 million and $182.7 million globally.
In the U.S., Super Bowl weekend is one of the quietest frames of the year in terms of moviegoing.
The only new film that dared to take to the field was CBS Films and Lionsgate's genre title Winchester, starring Helen Mirren. The period supernatural thriller debuted at No. 3 with an estimated $9.3 million from 2,480 theaters, in line with expectations despite withering reviews and a B- CinemaScore from audiences. Winchester's Rotten Tomatoes score is 9 percent, the lowest score on the site for Mirren outside of the documentary The Pulitzer at 100 (0 percent).
Directed by Michael Spierig and Peter Spierig, Winchester is inspired by the real-life tale of Sarah Winchester, the eccentric 19th-century heiress to the Winchester Repeating Arms Co. fortune. She spent her life constructing an enormous mansion in San Jose, California, complete with secret passages and trap doors, in order to keep at bay what she thought were the angry spirits of the people killed by her family's firearms. In the film, Winchester (Mirren) is visited by a skeptical San Francisco psychiatrist (Jason Clarke) who discovers that her obsession may not be so insane after all. CBS Films acquired rights for $3.5 million.
The movie succeeded in luring younger audiences, with 20 percent of ticket buyers under the age of 18 and 36 percent under 25. Females made up nearly 60 percent of ticket buyers.
Get the rest of the story at The Hollywood Reporter.
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