Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle was something rare in this day and age: a word-of-mouth hit--or at least as much of a word-of-mouth hit as an expensive franchise cog starring one of the biggest movie stars in the world and two other extremely well-known actors can possibly be. Opening five days after Star Wars: The Last Jedi, it under-performed in its first few days, but as The Last Jedi burned itself out quickly after Christmas, Jumanji began to gain momentum. On January 1, 2018, it became the #1 movie in America, a position it, with a few exceptions here and there, largely stayed at until after the Super Bowl.
Despite that film's success, there were concerns that Jumanji: The Next Level would under-perform. Welcome to the Jungle had faded from cultural relevance since the end of its theatrical run, and Dwayne Johnson had experienced a couple of box office disappointments since then.
The worries proved to be unfounded, as The Next Level opened to an outstanding $59.3 million. With the extremely lucrative Christmas week coming up, it could easily hit 2020 with $150 million already in the bank. That said, that is a long, long way from the first film's $404 million, and this January looks much more competitive than January 2018, so Jumanji will likely level down a bit. But even with that, this seems like a strong bet to hit at least $250 million before it ends its run.
Sliding down to second is Frozen II, which finished its fourth weekend with a still pretty impressive $19.1 million. The film has earned $366.4 million so far, and should be over $400 million by New Year's. Depending on how strong the holiday weekend gross is, it still has a shot at $500 million.
Knives Out continues its impressive run, taking in another $9.1 million for a total of $78/8 million. This should be over $100 million by the end of the year.
Opening in fourth is the first of this weekend's big flops, Richard Jewell. The Clint Eastwood directed drama about the security guard falsely accused of planting a bomb during the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta could only muster $4.7 million. Jewell got decent reviews, but was undoubtedly hurt by reviews that were more polite than enthusiastic, plus the sheer number of adult-aimed movies that had already been doing moderate-to-blockbuster business. Jewell probably would have been better off doing an Oscar-qualifying run now and waiting until January to go wide.
Also flopping out the gate is Black Christmas, the second remake of the early slasher flick, that apparently has little in common with its predecessors beyond the idea of sorority girls being stalked during the holidays. This Christmas could only manage a $4.2 million opening. Luckily, the film is cheap, so it won't lose too much money (and might even end up with a small profit). Christmas might have rolled out better last weekend. The first weekend of December is usually a decent weekend for horror, and just four years ago, another PG-13, Yule-themed horror movie, Krampus, debuted to over $16 million. I don't think Black Christmas would have made that much, but it seems likely at at least some of its potential audience was seeing Jumanji this weekend instead, so it might have picked up a few extra bucks by going wide last weekend.
At #6, Ford v Ferrari is on the verge of hitting $100 million, earning $4.1 million for a total of $98.2 million. Queen & Slim continues to do decent business in the second-fewest films in the Top 10, with $3.6 million for a total of $33.2 million. A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood brought in $3.3 million for a total of $49.3 million.
Rounding out the Top 10, Dark Waters fell to $1.9 million for a total of $8.8 million. 21 Bridges earned $1.2 million for $26.4 million.
Debuting in limited release outside the top ten are two films that are going wide in the next week. Uncut Gems, one of the rare occasions where Adam Sandler puts aside churning out unwatchable Netflix comedies to actually act, got strong reviews and opened on 5 screens to a per-screen of over $100,000. Meanwhile, Bombshell, starring Nicole Kidman, Charlize Theorn, and Margot Robie as Fox News employees who decide to take down Roger Ailes over his habitual sexual harassing, took in nearly $80,000 per screen.
This weekend features two of the most profitable franchises in history going head-to-head. In this corner stands Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, which is officially drawing the original Star Wars series to a close. Both The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi opened to over $200,000,000, and there is no reason to think that Skywalker won't do the same. In the other corner is Cats, an adaption of the Andrew Lloyd Webber/T.S. Eliot Broadway musical about cats, singing cats. The various theatrical productions over the years had brought in over $3.5 billion as of 2012, so that number is now probably higher. Cats is clearly hoping for a Dark Knight/Mamma Mia! scenario. Back during the summer of 2008, the action sequel and the musical opened up against each other, and even though Dark Knight became one of the highest-grossing films of all time, Mamma Mia also did extremely well. We'll see if history repeats itself this weekend.
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