Puss In Boots: The Last Wish Snatches Back Second Place At The Box Office, Despite Digital Release
After two weekends of "Avatar: The Way of Water" and "M3GAN" reigning in first and second place at the box office, respectively, a surprise upset has arrived in the form of a smoothly-voiced cat with a fashionable hat and a fine pair of boots. Since debuting at No. 2 over the Christmas 2022 weekend, animated sequel "Puss in Boots: The Last Wish" has been doggedly becoming one of the first major hits of 2023.
"The Last Wish" slipped to third place at the box office a couple of weekends ago, when it was released on digital streaming platforms after only two weeks in theaters. But instead of dwindling, the movie enjoyed a resurgence over Martin Luther King Jr. Day weekend, and Variety reports that it is projected to drop just 14% this weekend. With "M3GAN" looking at a 50% drop, adding around $9 million, "Puss in Boots: The Last Wish" is set to move back up into second place with an estimated $12.4 million weekend, bringing its domestic total to $127 million.
Okay, so "M3GAN" and "Puss in Boots" aren't exactly in direct competition with one another (as fun as it would be to picture that fight). Both movies were released by Universal Pictures, in a smart bit of counter-programming. If anything, this weekend continues to demonstrate what we saw from last week's promisingly healthy totals: that a diverse mix of genres can peacefully coexist at the box office, and draw out decent numbers of moviegoers by ensuring there's something for everyone playing. The Tom Hanks-led comedy drama "A Man Called Otto" is also holding strong, with an expected drop of just 30% from its first weekend in wide release. And things are looking good for this week's new wide release: phone/laptop-based mystery-thriller "Missing."
Missing finds its audience
Aneesh Chaganty's "Searching" was one of the big low-budget success stories of 2018. Made for less than $1 million, the movie stars John Cho as a father desperately trying to find his missing daughter via the power of the internet, and ultimately grossed $75 million at the worldwide box office — 86x its original production budget!
Directed by Nicholas D. Johnson and Will Merrick, the editors of the first movie, "Missing" is a spiritual sequel to "Searching" that flips the dynamic on its head: this time it's teenager June (Storm Reid) who's frantically trying to figure out what has happened to her mother, Grace (Nia Long), after she fails to return from a vacation in Colombia. After grossing $3.4 million on Friday (per Deadline), the movie is now looking at a $8.5 million opening weekend. With a reported budget of $7 million, that puts it on track to be another good investment for Sony Pictures.
We're once again looking at a tightly-grouped box office top five that makes it difficult to predict exactly how the rankings will shake out. While "Puss in Boots: The Last Wish" is pretty secure in second place, "A Man Called Otto" and "M3GAN" are both expected to gross around $9 million, which is pretty close to the estimate for "Missing." No matter how things shake out, though, it's incredibly encouraging to see so many low- and mid-budget movies at the top of the charts.
On the other end of the budget scale, "Avatar: The Way of Water" is enjoying its sixth consecutive weekend at the top of the box office and expected to add another $17-20 million domestically. With its current worldwide total standing at $1.928 billion, it should hit the $2 billion milestone very soon. Possibly by the time I finish typing this sentence.