Weekend Box Office: An 'Abominable' Weekend At 'Downton Abbey'
As I'm sure you've realized by now, the weekend is over. Which means it's time to tally up the weekend box office and see which movies came out ahead, and which sank like a stone. The weekend's big winner was Abominable, an animated pic from Universal. Second place went to the tea-drinking inhabitants of Downton Abbey, a film that held strong in its second week of release. Meanwhile, both Hustlers and It Chapter Two are still holding strong. All in all, no one had a bad weekend at the box office. Unless you hate every single movie playing right now, in which case, you had a pretty bad weekend. Sorry.
Never underestimate the power of a pretty-looking animated film. Abominable, yet another computer-animated movie about a Yeti (remember Smallfoot, anyone?), ended up at the top of the box office over the weekend, taking in $20.85 million. That's nothing to sneeze at, but it's worth noting the film cost about $75 million to make. Which means it still needs to pull in some dough in order to please the Universal overlords.
Meanwhile, in its second week of release, Downton Abbey pulled in $14.5 million, bringing its total so far to $58.5 million. In its third week, Hustlers hustled up $11.47 million, resulting in a domestic total of $80 million. And It Chapter Two hit spot number three, with a 10.4 million intake. That brings the horror sequel's domestic total to $193.9 million. It also scared up $11 million overseas, bringing the worldwide total to $417.4 million. Good work, Pennywise. This total is all the more impressive when you consider the reaction to Chapter Two has been far more mixed than the reaction to the first It. This also all but ensures Hollywood will stick with their current Stephen King adaptation-craze. I'm fine with that.
Ad Astra landed in fifth place with $10.1 million, and Rambo: Last Blood came in sixth with $8.5 million. This week sees the release of Joker, a film which is riding a huge wave of hype – and not all of it good. Will audiences flock to see the dark, violent comic book movie featuring Joaquin Phoenix as the Clown Prince of Crime? I have a feeling the answer is yes – there's too much curiosity surrounding the pic for it to be ignored. Whether or not audiences stick with it in the weeks to come is another question.
Here's the top 10 films at the box office, courtesy of Box Office Mojo.
1. Abominable
2. Downton Abbey
3. Hustlers
4. It Chapter Two
5. Ad Astra
6. Rambo: Last Blood
7. Judy
8. Good Boys
9. The Lion King
10. Angel Has Fallen