The Lost City reminds that an old-fashioned star vehicle can still bring out the crowds, while RRR has the best debut for a Bollywood film in North America ever.
The franchise film, needless to say, is dominant in Hollywood right now. Since the beginning of the year, six movies have topped the weekend box office chart. Five of them are franchise cogs in some way. Only one movie, the Tom Holland/Mark Wahlberg actioner Uncharted, primarily drew in fans based on the leads, and even that film got a big boost from being based on a popular video game series. However, finally, in the last weekend of March, we finally have a new film--the first since Free Guy last August--that is both not based on any prior source and whose leads are the big draw, that ends up at #1.
Sure, like Free Guy, The Lost City looks utterly derivative of previous movies--the 1984 smash Romancing the Stone comes most immediately to mind--but its screenplay is technically original, and it's hard to imagine the action comedy opening to $30.5 million if its leads were, say, Robin Wright and Zac Efron instead of Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum. With solid reviews, this stands an excellent chance of becoming the third film of 2022 to hit the $100 million mark.
After three weeks on top, franchise flick The Batman, which even by franchise standards, is doing extremely well, slipped to second, taking in $20.5 million for a total so far of $331.9 million. A final gross at or near $400 million seems assured.
Opening in third is the Indian thriller RRR, which opened to a fantastic $9.5 million in North America. This is the highest opening weekend gross and the highest chart position for a film from the subcontinent in US. To be fair, tickets for the film were considerably more expensive than for the other films playing at the theater, but even so, this is still a huge opening, and RRR does seem to now be on track to be the highest-grossing Indian film all time in North America.
The aforementioned Uncharted continues to do decent business, taking in $5 million for a total of $133.6 million. As expected, anime Jujitsu Kaisen 0 fell sharply from its impressive opening last weekend, taking in $4.6 million for a 12-day total of $27.7 million. While it likely won't catch up to Demon Slayer the Movie: Mugen Train, it should pass Dragon Ball: Broly to become the second-highest grossing non-Pokémon anime title in North America.
X held up quite well for a horror movie, falling less than 50% for a weekend take of $2.2 million. The critically acclaimed slasher has a ten-day total of $8.3 million. The other Channing Tatum vehicle, the sleeper hit Dog, barked up another $2.1 million for a total of $57.9 million.
Spider-Man: No Way Home hit a major milestone over the weekend, becoming only the third film in history to pass the $800 million mark domestically. The superhero saga, which finally looks like its on its way out of theaters, brought in $2 million for an official gross of $800.6 million. Also finally exiting theaters after a very long run itself is Sing 2, which took in $1.4 million for a total of $160.4 million.
Opening in tenth was the little-publicized mountain-climbing thriller Infinite Storm, which could only muster up $0.8 million. You should probably hurry if you're interested in seeing it in theaters. Last week's other wide opening, The Outfit, finished 12th for the weekend, with a ten-day total of $2.7 million.
Normally, April is a quiet month on the box office calendar, with maybe a couple of big titles early in the month, before the second half is dominated by dumps or maybe the first big summer title, which jumps back from the first Friday of May to the last Friday of April. This year, however, with studio shelves groaning under the weight of pandemic-delayed blockbusters, April has been basically transformed into the first month of the summer movie season, with The Lost City being the unofficial kickoff. This week brings the long-delayed Spider-Man spinoff Morbius, with Jared Leto as a biochemist whose attempts to cure his rare condition turns him into a vampire. Michael Keaton is reprising his villainous Vulture from Spider-Man: Homecoming, suggesting that this movie is part of the main MCU (the previous Spider-Manless Spider-Man spinoff, Venom, does not take place in the MCU, other than a couple of post-credit sequences). Also possibly making some noise on the lower half of the chart is newly-minted Best Picture winner CODA, though if Apple+ is as stingy with box office information as Netflix and Prime are with their theatrical releases, we may never know how much the film actually makes. Will Morbius be able to suck the life out of The Lost City and take the top? Or will Sandra and Channing hold off Leto? We'll find out next week.
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