A year after Covid raged in China, the country’s box office is all sewn up and back together with Detective Chinatown 3 besting Avengers: Endgame‘s U.S./Canada all-time opening with a $394M weekend. But here in the states, we’re still trying to get the pandemic under control, and winter storms which impacted 100 million Americans according to the National Weather Service didn’t help over a four-day Valentine’s Day/Presidents’ Day weekend which is historically a lucrative time.
This weekend, the wide entries were essentially last-minute awards contenders before the qualification period closes at the end of the month: Warner Bros.’ Judas and the Black Messiah about the killing of Chicago Black Panther leader Fred Hampton, and Focus Features’ Robin Wright feature-directorial debut drama Land which respectively made $2.4M and $1.07M over four days. But neither of them was No. 1, rather it was Universal/Dreamworks Animation’s Thanksgiving release, Croods: A New Age which popped up to No. 1 in its 12th weekend with $2.66M–a No. 1 resurgence which is unheard of in recent box office history for any wide entry (you have to go back to the 1980s when lengthy theatrical tentpoles release would pop back up to the top of the charts). Croods: A New Age has taken in $48.9M to date, and it’s even on PVOD, which again, underscores how hungry people are to get back to cinemas, especially families; they’ll watch a movie that’s 12 weekends old. Over 3-days, Croods 2 is +21% from last weekend with $2.04M. The pic was booked at 1,890 theaters.
Last year, Paramount delivered the first big movie under new CEO Jim Gianopulos, Sonic the Hedgehog, which debuted to $70M over 4-days (and finaled at $148.9M domestic, $319.7M). But the biggest Presidents Day’ opener was 2018’s Disney/Marvel movie Black Panther which debuted to $242.1M (and finaled stateside with $700M, $1.3 billion WW).
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