'Raya And The Last Dragon' Leads Past Weekend's Box Office – Again

Raya and the Last Dragon lead last weekend's box office for the second time in a row following the Disney animated epic's debut in both theaters and HBO Max on March 5. In fact, both the top two films playing in theaters, Raya and the Last Dragon and Tom & Jerry, are available both in theaters and home viewing. But as a sign that we're still a long way from getting back to "normal," both films accounted for nearly half of the box office gains this past weekend.

This weekend, the entire box office haul of all the movies playing in theaters amounted to $20 million, according to IndieWire. And the two top-performing titles, Disney's Raya and the Last Dragon and Warner Bros.' Tom & Jerry, accounted for nearly half of that.

Of the top 10 performing movies this past weekend, only three titles are available concurrently at home. But that didn't seem to help boost totals, with roughly 2.5 million tickets sold this weekend. Overall, business went down 25% — possibly due to the lack of new releases. Raya and the Last Dragon still managed to hold on to the number one spot with a 35% drop. During typical times, family films would hold better in the second weekend, but the Disney film at least kept the top spot with a $16 million haul in North America and $52.6 million worldwide. The number of Disney+ $29.99 PVOD rentals are still unreported by the streamer. However, Raya and the Last Dragon is the only film among wide releases to have a per-theater average of above $2,000, with only two other titles earning over $1,000.

Two new titles entered the Top 10 list: Jathi Ratnalu, a Telugu-language Indian film came in at sixth place with an estimated $480,000 while Sony's The Father took the number 10 spot with a reported gross of $350,000.

Theaters have been slowly starting to resume operations, but currently only half of all theaters are open — which, to be fair, is enough to access about 80% of the potential audience, per IndieWire. With major market New York movie theaters open at limited capacity for the first time since the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic began, California is following with most of its theaters permitted to operate by next weekend.