'Lego Batman' Wins the Week, 'Fifty Shades' Comes in Second

The Lego Batman Movie was expected to be the biggest movie at the box office this weekend, and it was. It didn't quite perform up to expectations, though, and Fifty Shades Darker did better than expected. The result was a race that was closer than the experts had predicted.

Lego Batman brought in $55.6 million over the weekend. That's the biggest opening of any movie so far in 2017, but it's well below the most optimistic projections, which had the family-friendly film earning as much as $70 million.

In second place was Fifty Shades Darker with $46.8 million. The erotic sequel was expected to take in, at most, $40 million. While its actual take was enough to threaten Batman's top spot, it was still far behind the opening weekend of Fifty Shades of Grey, which drew $85 million in its first few days,

The weekend's surprises also extended to the week's third wide new release. Keanu Reeve's John Wick: Chapter 2 took in $30 million. That's well beyond the $20 million that the most optimistic predictors had it earning and more than twice as much as its predecessor earned in its opening weekend.

Overall, box office business was nearly double that of last weekend. Compared to the same weekend last year, however, the weekend lagged far behind, with a $199-million total take compared to $239 million last year.