Amid a $47M weekend with no new, “must-see” releases (we’ll get to those later), Spider-Man: No Way Homeeasily swings back to the number one spot with another $14M. Dropping just 29.7% from last weekend, Spider-Man continues to benefit from phenomenal word-of-mouth, and the lack of competition. The third installment of the Marvel/Sony Spider-Man franchise has brought in a box-office total of $721M – making it the fourth highest-grossing domestic film of all time (behind Avatar’s $760.5M). Worldwide, Spidey claims the sixth highest gross with $1.69B.
After spending one weekend in the top spot, Scream dropped to second place with a sophomore weekend of $12M. The sequel/reboot (requel?) has earned in a total of $51.4M thus far – meaning that in just nine days, Scream has already slashed through the lifetime gross of 2011’s Scream 4 ($38.2M). For a franchise that many believed was dead in 2011, these numbers point to a pretty decent comeback.
Now, about those new releases: Universal’s Redeeming Love and Gravitas Ventures’ The King Daughter. Both films suffered terrible reviews pre-release, with critics slapping a bright green 11% onto Redeeming Love and 24% onto The King’s Daughter. Still, the faith-based romantic drama found an audience worth $3.71M – enough to slide Redeeming Love into fourth place this weekend. The same could not be said about the $750K debut of The King’s Daughter. The film was originally owned by Paramount for a 2015 release, but essentially gathered dust until being picked up by Gravitas.
Both new films lagged behind Sing 2’s $5.7M – the animated Universal film landed in third place this weekend. Having earned $128.4M domestically and $241.2M globally, Sing 2 surpasses The Croods: A New Age as the highest-grossing animated movie of the pandemic. Without direct competition until April’s Sonic the Hedgehog 2, families are going to continue to gravitate towards Sing 2 and Spider-man for a while.
January closes out with no new wide releases next weekend. Expect Spider-Man, Scream, and Sing 2 to top the box-office charts once again. Looking at the calendar gross, January’s to-date total of $336M is already leaps and bounds ahead of 2021’s $65M total – thanks to vaccinations and an actual movie slate exclusive to theaters! Still, theaters have been depending on just one blockbuster (Spider-Man) to carry the box-office since mid-December. Even with one week left to go, 2022’s January box-office total will be mild compared to the pre-Covid era.
The box-office will be back with new releases Friday, February 4 with the debuts of Jackass Forever and Moonfall.
