Mean Girls and The Beekeeper have solid openings, while The Book of Clarence gets slammed shut.
From the 1930s through the 1970s, the Hollywood-Broadway pipeline mostly flowed one way--west. Hit stage musicals would be adapted into big budgeted movie musicals. At some point between the 70s and the 90s, however, as movie musicals mostly fell out of style, the pipeline began flowing the other direction, and suddenly, movies, musical and non-musical alike, started getting adapted into Broadway musicals. Indeed, the trend is so pronounced that over the last ten years, no less than 15 Broadway shows based on movies have gotten a Tony nomination for Best Musical.
One of those nominations, in 2018, went to Mean Girls, an adaption by Tiny Fey and her husband Jeff Richmond, of the hit 2004 teen comedy that Fey had written and co-starred in (notably, of the four Best Musical nominees that season, three of them: Mean Girls, Frozen, and winner The Band's Visit, were based on movies, and the fourth nominee was SpongeBob SquarePants). The show would run for just under two years, before the pandemic closed all of Broadway, and the producers decided not to reopen. Four years after that, the show executed the rare Hollywood-to-Broadway-back-to-Hollywood move.
It was a successful return to the big screen for the story, as the new Mean Girls opened over the Friday-to-Sunday portion of the long MLK weekend to $28.6 million. That outgrosses the opening of the original back in 2004, which took in a surprise $24.4 million in what is normally a throwaway late April weekend ahead of the beginning of the summer movie season. That one had the advantage of starring Lindsey Lohan, while this one stars the relatively unknown Angourie Rice, though Fey, who once again wrote the screenplay, also returns in the same role she played in the original. With the new box office environment, it seems doubtful that Mean Girls'24 can hit the $86 million that Mean Girls'04 took in twenty years ago, but with a fairly light slate over the next few weeks, if this gets good word-of-mouth, it has a fighting chance.
Buzzing into a solid opening at second is The Beekeeper, the latest Jason Statham action extravaganza, in which he plays a retired government operative who goes against a network of scammers preying on the elderly. Critics were surprisingly kind to the film, conceding that while it may be a stupid January action movie, it was a fun stupid January action movie, and that helped the film open at $16.6 million through Sunday, a number that just edges 2005's Transporter 2 as Statham's best opening for an R-rated vehicle, not counting the Expendables films (indeed, its opening is just under last year's Expend4bles final gross). Transporter 2 topped out at just over $43 million, which will likely be a steep mountain for Beekeeper to climb. But, as noted earlier, the upcoming slate is fairly thin, meaning that the film might just have (six) legs to climb that mountain.
After two weeks on top, Wonka, the holiday season's biggest hit, falls to third, taking in $176.3 though Sunday. Wonka is currently sitting at #11 for the year, and should pass Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour to hit the year's Top 10 by next weekend. Whether it has enough juice chocolate milk to make it to $200 million remains to be seen, but as I've noted before, the upcoming slate is thin, especially as no new family movie opens until Kung Fu Panda 4 in March.
After three straight week of weekly climbing grosses, Anyone But You suffered its first drop, falling a mere 27% to $7.1 million through Sunday. That's enough to put the film at $55.4 million, enough that the film is rapidly approaching seeing the percentage of its opening weekend numbers in its total gross fall under 10%, making it easily the leggiest film of the year.
The other family movie out right now besides Wonka, Migration, continues to fly toward $100 million, taking in $6.2 million to bring its gross to $85.8 million. While the film isn't exactly a flop, it's almost certain to go down as one of Illumination's lowest-grossing titles, with 2011's Hop, which topped out at just over $108 million, likely to be the one stablemate that Migration will be able to pass.
Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom has already passed $100 million, as its $5.3 million brings the waterlogged superhero epic to $108.2 million. Thanks to solid weekday numbers during the holidays, Aquaman already has easily the best opening weekend multiplier of any of 2023's superhero movies, even better than Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. It's still probably going to be classified as a flop, though.
It was fun while it lasted. Night Swim has already relinquished its title as 2024's #1 movie to Mean Girls, as the other waterlogged title in the Top 10 fell a not-surprising 60% in its second weekend to $4.6 million, for a ten-day total of $19.2 million. This one could very well drown before it hits $25 million.
The Boys in the Boat continues to row along steadily, picking up another $3.4 million for a total of $39.3 million. This will be George Clooney's second highest-grossing title as a director, trailing only The Monuments Men, which earned $78 million in 2014.
Religious satire tends to be a hard sell, and once again, audiences weren't buying this weekend as The Book of Clarence could only pray up $2.6 million. The religious comedy, starring LaKeith Stanfield as a resident of 1st century Jerusalem who finds surprising success by pretending to be the Messiah, will at least outgross 2022's immediately forgotten Honk For Jesus Save Your Soul, but probably not by much.
Rounding out the Top 10, The Iron Claw grappled with another $2.4 million for a total of $29.2 million. Distributor A24 would love to see star Jeremy Allen White add an Oscar nomination to go along with his brand new Emmy, but will likely have to settle for the wrestling drama being a sleeper hit instead.
Outside the Top 10, American Fiction expanded semi-wide, enough to bring in $1.9 million over the weekend, for a total of $5.2 million. The dark comedy about a frustrated Black novelist who intentionally writes a bad, stereotypical "Black" novel only, to his horror, see it turn into a hot property is likely going to earn star Jeffrey Wright his first Oscar nomination. Farther down--much farther down--Disney chose to give Soul, the 2020 Pixar entry that the studio was forced to delay six months before finally just releasing it onto Disney+, a belated theatrical release. Given that nearly everyone who might want to see it undoubtably has the streaming service and could have watched it for free anytime over the last three years, it shouldn't be surprising that it grossed only about $0.4 million. Who knows what this means for the upcoming releases of the other two straight-to-Disney+ Pixar movies, Luca and Turning Red.
As mentioned before, this is a quiet weekend, with only one new title going wide. I.S.S. is a thriller set on the International Space Station during a time when renewed tensions with Russia threaten to spill over into a hot war. The I.S.S. becomes a war zone when the American crew (Ariana DeBose, Chris Messina, and John Gallagher, Jr.) receive orders to seize the station from the Russians onboard. This one has been fairly lightly promoted, and has a plot that sounds like a January thriller, so I'm skeptical about its chances of prevailing. However, in the wilds of January, even a semi-decent open might propel a film to the top spot. Will I.S.S. be floating above the earth? Or will Mean Girls scratch its eyes out? We'll find out next week.
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