As expected, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker continued to dominate the box office, pulling in $72.4 million over the weekend. That brings its 10-day total to $362.2 million. At this point, its running fairly even with The Last Jedi and well ahead of Rouge One, suggesting that it should be able to finish above the latter film's $532.2 million final. If it can keep up with Jedi, Skywalker might be able to slip past $600 million after all.
One of the unique things about the post-Christmas weekend is that it is the one weekend of the year where films routinely see their grosses go up compared to the weekend before. Frankly, it's not a good sign that, instead, Skywalker fell nearly 60%, which would be a steep drop any weekend, and especially egregious on this weekend. That said, Skywalker started out so high that such a drop is not that big of an issue--yet.
One film that did jump compared to last weekend is Jumanji: The Next Level, which repeated at second with $35.3 million. That brings its total to $175.5 million. Direct comparisons to Welcome to the Jungle are difficult as well, as Jungle opened a full week after Next Level, meaning that by the end of its third weekend, it was already past New Years and into its dominance of January. The Next Level is likely to play well into the first month of the year, but it seems unlikely to have the dominance Jungle did two years ago.
Frozen II stayed in third, also surging from the previous weekend, as it took in $16.9 million, to bring its total to $421.7 million. It's now above the final gross of Frozen and is just a million behind the final combined gross of all of the releases of The Lion King '94, meaning that by now, it is the highest grossing film ever from Walt Disney Animation Studios. It has an outside shot of catching Finding Dory, but will remain well below the final gross of The Incredibles II and (should you classify it as animated, something Disney does not want to do) The Lion King '19.
Opening strongly on Christmas Day is the enthusiastically reviewed remake of Little Women. The all-star period drama had a first weekend of $16.8 million and has earned $29.2 million since its Christmas Day opening. This is the type of film that frequently had solid legs (think The Greatest Showman), so there's a chance it could finish above $100 million. Awards attention will certainly help. Women was largely ignored by the Golden Globes and SAG, but grosses like these will help with the Academy.
Not having a Merry Christmas was Spies in Disguise, which, on its opening weekend, fell over $3 million below the weekend gross of an animated film that had been out since before Thanksgiving. The animated action-comedy took in only $13.4 million over the weekend and $22.2 million since its Wednesday opening. With kids out of school for another week, Spies will have the chance to pad that total with some decent weekday grosses, but it seems highly unlikely to get anywhere near $100 million, marking yet another disappointing performance for a Will Smith film.
Knives Out joined the century club right before the weekend, as the best-reviewed film of the holidays earned $9.9 million to bring its total to $110.3 million, and appears to be heading to a final gross of around $130-140 million.
Rave reviews helped Adam Sandler's Oscar play, Uncut Gems, surge to 7th in its first weekend of wide release, taking in $9.6 million. The well-reviewed drama has taken in $20 million since its limited release on the 13th.
Its drop wasn't as bad as Skywalker's, but it did drop, and unlike Star Wars, Cats doesn't have any room for error. The widely lampooned musical brought in $4.8 million, presumably mostly from people hate-watching, to bring its 10-day total to a meager $17.8 million. Also dropping from last weekend, though by less than 10%, is the Fox News expose Bombshell, whose trio of big name actresses aren't convincing people to come in to see recent history (which has lately been a tough sell, no matter the film). The drama took in $4.8 million, for a total of $15.8 million. Unlike Cats, Bombshell has some Oscar hopes, though with the reviews and box office, those hopes are fading. Rounding out the Top 10 is another would-be Oscar bait movie about recent history, Richard Jewell, which earned $3.1 million--a small bump from last weekend--to bring its gross to $16.2 million.
There is only one new wide release this weekend, as, for the 10th year in a row, only one brand-new film debuts wide on the first non-New Years Day Friday of the year, and for the 10th year in a row, that one new film is a horror movie. While the original Japanese Ju-on: The Grudge, nor its sequels didn't do much business in the US, they did well on video/DVD, and the 2004 English-language remake, starring Sarah Michelle Geller, was a smash, making $110.4 million (its 2006 sequel did marginal business). After the property lied dormant for the last decade and a half, Sony rebooted it, this time in a hard-R version (as opposed to the 2004 version's PG-13), with probably a better cast than such a remake deserves (John Cho, Betty Gilpin, Demian Bichir). Tradition suggests that this film should do well--last year's entry, Escape Room, opened to $18.2 million--so while I don't expect The Grudge to challenge Skywalker for the top spot, or even Jumanji for second, it could easily come in at a strong #3. At the very least, it will enjoy a short reign as the highest-grossing movie of 2020.
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