The top five have been dramatically rearranged within 24 hours following Saturday’s weekend box office estimates. Although Kenneth Branagh’s Death on the Nile remains the weekend’s top film, Universal’s rom-com Marry Me (almost) lost the number two position to holdover blockbuster Jackass Forever. Meanwhile, the Liam Neeson action-packed film Blacklight, which was rumored to have debuted at number six on Saturday, has crept into the top five, surpassed out the animated follow-up Sing 2.
The recently Oscar-nominated Branagh’s second Agatha Christie adaption, Murder on the Orient Express, grossed $12.8 million over three days, less than half of what his first, Murder on the Orient Express, did in 2017. That movie also cost almost half as much as this one, with an estimated $55 million vs $90 million. Add in the expenditures that must have accumulated in the two years that Death on the Nile has been put aside, and this doesn’t appear to be a result that Disney has expected just yet.
Death on the Nile is the latest in a worrisome trend of Disney’s acquired Fox movies failing flopping at the box office. To mixed reviews, the Mouse House has previously published Fox leftovers such as The New Mutants, West Side Story, The King’s Man, and The Last Duel. Murder on the Orient Express, on the other hand, defied predictions with a $28.6 million premiere and went on to gross more than $100 million domestically.
Paramount’s fourth Jackass film, which debuted at number two, earned $8.05 million in its second weekend, bringing its domestic total to more than $37 million. That’s a good showing for a brand that had been inactive for nearly a decade and a film that cost only $10 million to develop.
Universal was satisfied with the results of Marry Me, a $23 million romantic comedy that landed in third place with $8 million. This genre is not well-liked in the market, which was previously dominated by Jennifer Lopez. People nowadays prefer to see these kinds of films at home, and they definitely had alternatives this weekend with Prime Video’s I Want You Back, Netflix’s Tall Girl 2, and Apple’s The Sky is Everywhere. When you realize that Marry Me was also made available on the Peacock streaming platform, the film’s strong box office performance is even more astounding.
Sony’s Spider-Man: No Way Home, which has been dominating the box office for two months, took fourth place. This weekend, the picture earned $7.1 million, bringing its domestic total to a staggering $759 million. It’s around $1 million short of surpassing Avatar’s $760.5 million in box office sales to become the third-highest earning movie of all time.
Despite screening in almost 2,700 theaters, Blacklight only grossed $3.6 million. It’s a number that reflects the film’s poor reviews, and it might be the final nail in the coffin for a sub-genre of action movie that Neeson helped create with the sleeper success Taken back in 2008.
The long-awaited video game adaption Uncharted will be released next weekend, as will Channing Tatum and his longtime creative collaborator Reid Carolin’s directorial debut, Dog.
