'Aquaman's $940M+ Global Muscle Bests 'Batman V. Superman' & 'Wonder Woman'; 'Escape Room' Packs $18M Stateside
Even though it's a quiet weekend at the box office after the mad holiday rush between Christmas and New Year's Day, studios savor the first frame of the year given its great holdover business. Kids are still off from school (K-12 was 61% off on Friday moving to 22% by Monday, college was 92% off and will be at 69% over the same four-day frame) and heading to the movies, and another big plus: There isn't a major snow storm freezing out the Northeast.
Warner Bros.' third weekend of Aquaman is the only title grossing north of $20M with a studio-reported $30.7M, -41% for a running total by EOD of $259.7M. He's a bigger deal overseas where WB officially reports what we've all been expecting for days that the the DC superhero has scaled to $940.7M WW with $681M overseas. Nancy reported that's the best overseas haul for a DC pic abroad. On a global basis Aquaman is ahead of DC's Batman v. Superman ($873.6M), Sony/Marvel's Venom ($855M), Warners/DC's Wonder Woman ($821.8M).
Columbia Picture's Escape Room was a great surprise to many, pushing its way past Disney's Mary Poppins Returns for 2nd place bragging rights of $18M this morning. At $6.6M, Saturday held in at -13% from Friday for Escape Room. Sony originally was going to construct Escape Room during the sleepy post Thanksgiving period of Nov. 30, but then moved the genre pic to Feb. 1 and finally this weekend. Good move: It's quite conceivable that Universal/BVI/Blumhouse's Glass will still be going strong at that time, and Sony opted to put its remake of Hispanic action-thriller Miss Bala on Feb. 1.
Poppins this morning looks like she's raking in an estimated third weekend of $15.8M after a Saturday that was +32% over Friday with $6.6M. The Rob Marshall-directed musical is nominated for four Golden Globes today including best musical/comedy.
Rivals agree: Escape Room is a great result for a PG-13 horror pic that reportedly carries a $9M production cost. Horror easily plays to the under 25 set during the first weekend of the year. A great example of how powerful genre can be at this time of year was Paramount's The Devil Inside back in 2012: The pic opened to No. 1 with $33.7M off a rare F CinemaScore. Those who entered Escape Room were 54/46 Male and 80% under 35 with the single largest quad being 18-24 years old at 33%. The mix was 42% Caucasian, 22% Hispanic, 20% African American & 16% Asian/Other. Escape Room played best in the on the East Coast along with the Mid & South-West.
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