by Conan Simmons – March 29, 2021 – 4:28 am
The new action film starring Bob Odenkirk takes the top spot at the Weekend Box Office Top 5. ‘Nobody’ debuted taking $6.7 million in the first weekend in six weeks to see every film in the Top 5 make $1 million or more.
The long running animated hit, ‘The Croods: A New Age’ finally drops out of the Top 5 after holding on for 17 weeks.
The Benedict Cumberbatch spy drama ‘The Courier’ saw the biggest drop from its third place debut last weekend.
Animated films remain the most popular genre for moviegoers as ‘Raya and the Last Dragon’ and ‘Tom and Jerry’ hold second and third place.
Movie theaters are reopening around the world with Cineworld’s Regal Cinemas coming back to life after a year long shutdown. The world’s second largest theater chain opens their doors in anticipation of ‘Godzilla vs. Kong’ which opens this Wednesday, March 31. The battle of the Kaiju titans is expected to be a major box office hit having already made nearly $130 million overseas. As the movie stars both Godzilla and King Kong, two computer animated characters, it only further exemplifies audiences favoring animated films, or in this case a genre the Japanese call Tokusatsu, meaning “special filming”. Tokusatsu refers to live action films that rely heavily on special effects, something that Hollywood has increasingly favored for more than 20 years now.
‘Godzilla vs. Kong’ will be a day-and-date release on HBO Max as will the upcoming video game adaptation ‘Mortal Kombat’ on April 16.
As for release date changes, Disney made the long rumored announcement that Marvel’s ‘Black Widow’ will be a day-and-date release on Disney+ as they shift the release date to July 9 in order to capitalize on President Biden’s declared goal that “everything should be reopened by July 4th”. It is somewhat ironic coming from Disney after all the fuss they made about wanting to reopen their Disneyland and Disney World theme parks as the pandemic was still raging in California and Florida. The state of California is allowing theme parks to reopen April 1 under Covid-19 guidelines, Disneyland is expected to wait until April 30 to reopen their gates.
WEEKEND BOX OFFICE TOP 5 (March 26-28, 2021)
- ‘Nobody’ – $6.7 million – action (debut)
- ‘Raya and the Last Dragon’ – $3.5 million – animated (drop $1.7 million, 33% decline)
- ‘Tom and Jerry’ – $2.5 million – animated (drop $1.3 million, 34% decline)
- ‘Chaos Walking’ – $1.2 million – sci-fi (drop $700k, 37% decline)
- ‘The Courier’ – $1 million – drama (drop $1 million, 50% decline)
Total for the Weekend Box Office Top 5 comes to $14.9 million. An increase of $1.4 million, or 10%, over last weekends total of $13.5 million.