by Conan Simmons – February 2, 2021 – 8:33 am
The last weekend of the first month of the year ended with the Weekend Box Office Top 5 up 40%. The release of the new Denzel Washington mystery, ‘The Little Things’ co-starring Rami Malek and Jared Leto, took the top spot as expected with a day-and-date release.
Day-and-date releases will be the norm in 2021.
Animated hit, ‘The Croods: A New Age’ continues strong in the Top 5 never falling below third place in 10 weeks of release. It maintains its performance from last weekend without declining (nor gaining) at the box office. The popular sequel is the best proof that audiences will go to the theaters in spite of the film being available to stream at home since mid-December.
Fantasy film ‘Monster Hunter’, based on the successful video game, holds on in its seventh week of release and ‘Wonder Woman 1984’ narrowly edges out the action of ‘The Marksman’ to take third.
WEEKEND BOX OFFICE TOP 5 (January 29-31, 2021)
- ‘The Little Things’ – $4.7 million – mystery (debut)
- ‘The Croods: A New Age’ – $1.8 million – animated (no change)
- ‘Wonder Woman 1984’ – $1.3 million – fantasy (drop $300k, 19% decline)
- ‘The Marksman’ – $1.3 million – action (drop $700k, 35% decline)
- ‘Monster Hunter’ – $735k – fantasy (drop $75k, 9% decline)
The total for the Weekend Box Office Top 5 comes in at $9.8 million. This is a gain of $281k over last weekend’s total of $7 million, for a 40% increase.
February will see some new releases aimed at the delayed awards season. There will certainly be changes in the top spot over the month but none are expected to be huge box office hits. That expectation is set for the late March release of ‘Godzilla vs. Kong’, which will likely maintain its release date of March 31 (pushed back from March 26) in spite of rumors that it will be delayed to later in the year.