As it turns out, what would get a huge mass of reluctant moviegoers back into theaters wasn't time travelers, or animated cavemen, or Reagan-era Amazons, or cat and mouse combos, or animated dragons. It was a giant lizard and a giant monkey using the ruins of Hong Kong to beat each other senseless.
That's the lesson we can draw as Godzilla vs. Kong opened to $32.2 million over the weekend and $48.5 million since its opening last weekend. That's easily the best weekend performance since Onward's opening weekend at the beginning of March last year, in what would be the final "normal" moviegoing weekend. Godzilla easily passed Tom and Jerry to become 2021's highest grosser, and is only about $8.5 million behind Tenet to become the highest-grosser of the pandemic era. Short of a massive collapse, it's also well on its way to being the first $100 million movie since Sonic the Hedgehog passed that milestone in February 2020.
The fantastic performance of Kong is a huge relief to the exhibition industry, which probably can relax knowing that few, if any, more major movies will flee to farther away on the calendar (or just skip theaters entirely and head straight to streaming). While studios will still likely shift dates around, it will likely be to ensure the maximum return on the dollar, not to hope that the new date selected won't be wiped out as well.
And the good news for Kong is that with April and early May already bare and likely to stay that way (it's probably too late in the process for a studio to shift something major to the slot Black Widow abandoned a couple weeks ago), the film has a lot of room to play. It'll probably have a couple of steep declines, but then stabilize with steady weekly grosses at least until Spiral arrives in mid-May.
Godzilla utterly dominated the box office, accounting for nearly 3 out of every 4 tickets sold over the weekend, but there were some people in other auditoriums as well. Opening in a distant second was Catholic horror flick The Unholy, which opened to $3.2 million. Like most horror movies, expect this one to fade fast, though given the lack of hype and the massive competition, it didn't do too badly for itself. Last week's champ, Nobody, had a big drop, as did all the holdovers, but still came in third with $3 million. Its ten-day total stands at $11.8 million.
In fourth and fifth are joined-at-the-hips family films Raya and the Last Dragon and Tom and Jerry. Raya bought in $2 million for the weekend for a total of $32.2 million, while Tom relinquished its spot atop the 2021 box office chart to studiomate Kong, but it still has earned $39.5 million after a $1.4 million weekend. Those numbers are a bit concerning for the two films, as they're still a ways away from $50 million. That said, despite the big drops for both titles this week, they should stabilize again, as there are no family films out for quite some time.
Opening in 6th was the weekend's other religious film tied to Easter, The Girl Who Believed in Miracles. Its opening was not miraculous at all, as it was only able to earn $0.6 million. The Courier and Chaos Walking came in 7th and 8th, with totals to date of $4.3 million and $12.2 million. In ninth, The Croods: A New Age (in its 19th weekend) saw its dreams of being the top pandemic movie come to an end, because even if it does pass Tenet, Godzilla will have already passed both. It stands at $56.4 million. Opening wideish in tenth is the failed Oscar bait comedy French Exit, starring Michelle Pfeiffer, which took in just under $0.2 million.
Godzilla should rampage back to the top of the charts this weekend, but likely opening in #2 is Voyagers, a sci-fi thriller starring Tye Sheridan, Lily-Rose Depp, and Colin Farrell, about teenage astronauts who can no longer tell what's real and what's just hallucinations. How much Voyagers will open to, and how close it could come to the king (Kong) we'll find out next week.
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