August is normally a slower month at the box office. However, we did have a surprise at the weekend box office as Crazy Rich Asians knocked The Meg from first place.
Crazy Rich Asians opened on Wednesday and brought in an impressive $34 million over the first five days. It is the first Asian-led studio film to hit theaters since The Joy Luck Club 25 years ago and it looks like the film will have continued success.
The film had a production budget of $30 million and is also continuing to open in several different international markets. It only brought in $730,000 over the first six markets and will be expanding over the next couple weeks.
The Meg dropped one spot to second place after taking a 53 percent drop during its second weekend. The shark thriller brought in $21.2 million and is approaching $85 million domestically. I will admit this film is doing much better than I thought it would be doing.
The new action thriller Mile 22 opened in third place with a bit of a lower opening than expected. The film brought in $13.6 million from 3,520 locations. The film starring Mark Wahlberg had hoped to be the beginning of a potential franchise, but I think that will depend on if the film can find a larger audience over the next few weeks.
Alpha opened in fourth place with $10.5 million. This is right around the expectations for this film. The budget of $50 million might be a tough challenge to reach after its domestic opening and it will depend on the international performance of the film.
Mission: Impossible—Fallout rounds out the top five with $10.5 million and just crossed $180 million domestically. I’ve been very impressed with box office performance of this film and definitely expect the film to cross $200 million domestically.
BlacKkKlansman and Slender Man both took decent drops during their second weekends. BlacKkKlansman dropped 35 percent and finished in seventh place and brought in $7 million. Slender Man dropped 56 percent and finished in eighth place with $5 million.
Christopher Robin ($8.9 million), Hotel Transylvania 3 ($3.7 million) and Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again! ($3.4 million) round out the rest of the top ten.
Outside of the top ten, we saw Ant-Man and the Wasp creep closer to $210 million domestically. Incredibles 2 is less than $6 million away from crossing $600 million domestically. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom also crossed $410 million domestically after nine weeks of release.
It will be interesting to see if Crazy Rich Asians will be able to repeat as box office champion. It will be facing competition from three new wide releases including the new drama Searching, starring John Cho.
Weekend Gross by Distributor:
Warner Bros.: $47.1 million
Sony Pictures: $22 million
Disney: $14 million
STX Entertainment: $13.6 million
Paramount Pictures: $10.5 million
Focus Features: $7 million
Universal: $4.7 million
Lionsgate: $2.9 million
Next week’s openings: A.X.L., The Happytime Murders, Searching
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